A Nigerian company has created Termii, a social-business networking site that integrates social, personal and business structures in a unified network.
Termii, operated by Termii Networks, allows users to run their social and professional networks from one website, with features including networking, picture and file sharing, event and calendar planning and virtual office management.
Founder and chief operating officer (COO) of Termii Gbolade Emmanuel told HumanIPO the company was in the process of perfecting the platform through an in-house appraisal of its efforts, and would be rolling out in a few weeks.
“Termii offers users an engaging platform that integrates their professional and personal lives, taking advantage of a wide range of available online applications and services that help to improve user experience across platforms,” he said.
“Simplicity and seamlessness in navigation have been our core principles in the design of this incredible product. The sheer joy that a user feels while engaged by our online services is one that motivates us to achieve more. We strongly believe that these factors make us unique and different from other online professional networking websites.”
Emmanuel said Termii was looking beyond Nigeria and Africa in terms of its prospective user base.
“Our target is not only the African market but also the Indian-Asian market,” he said. “But for now our priority is Africa. We aim at becoming a pan-African social business network, and for the record we do not have many cloud-tech business network platforms in Africa and India as competition, except for a few, of which LinkedIn is number one.”
Termii evolved from Friendzdiary, which was founded in 2011 and gained up to 1,000 users. Emmanuel and his team, however, decided they want to focus on something new.
“We the founders decided we wanted something new,” he said. “Friendzdiary was not achieving what we had in mind because it was conventional and had fierce competition. Our user base was a little close to a thousand and most of them wanted something different, so we went back to the drawing table to draw out something new.
“We discovered that what we wanted to build was tending a little towards business and social networking, that made us rethink our strategy and evaluate our users alongside other potential users in the tech market.”
Early this year, Emmanuel and his partners obtained funding from law firm Messrs Segun and Segun and the Toba Branding Agency, which has enabled the development of Termii.
“We are in the business of building a global brand,” he said.
“I believe strongly that to push forward the prosperity of a nation, each and every individual must seek to improve himself and the lives of others. However, not everyone has such opportunity. The onus lies in the hands of those who have the opportunity, the realisation of that opportunity, and the will to drive your vision to the greatest heights achievable.”
Termii is anticipating over one million users in Africa and Asia across desktop and mobile, with the company launching a mobile application in its pre-launch phase. It currently has a staff of 10 in Nigeria, five in India and more than 50 at its server partners in Los Angeles, United States.
