The strategic expansion positions the company as a new competitive entrant in the EU market offering data warehousing and analytics products as well as highly experienced senior data engineers from its Nigeria team as consultants for European firms. Olumide Soyombo, co-founder at Bluechip Technologies commented, “We are excited to be one of the trusted experts answering the growing demand for data products and solutions in the global market. Numerous businesses trust us to provide quality analytics solutions which has led to referrals from our international clients in Africa for projects outside the continent. We are looking forward to combining our expertise with local knowledge to secure new strategic relationships, with the experience we bring from one of the toughest markets meaning we can offer this market the same robust solutions and services.” Founded in Nigeria in 2008 by Kazeem Tewogbade and Olumide Soyombo, Bluechip leveraged the technical skills and reputation of Kazeem Tewogbade in the IT industry to gain market entry and has since expanded to Ghana, Kenya, Zambia and DRC. Bluechip is a business application company focused exclusively on assisting companies in planning, designing, implementing and operating business application solutions and strategies that are central to creating and maintaining a competitive business advantage, and has been at the forefront of Africa’s data warehousing growth. The company specialises in data warehouse, analytics and enterprise systems for banks and telcos and has worked with enterprise and infrastructure companies with pan-African and global reach, including MTN, 9mobile, FirstBank, Access Bank, GTBank and Lafarge. Having successfully delivered (in partnership with international OEMs, such as Oracle and Microsoft) a range of enterprise tech infrastructure solutions in the African market, Bluechip is now ready to do the same in Europe and plans to target the telco and banking sector, from its Ireland base. The growing post-pandemic trend in remote working, a critical shortage of tech talent and an increase in demand for managing data more efficiently all present a great opportunity for Bluechip to bring its more than decade-long expertise in the sector, delivering highly specialised services in often challenging markets, to the wider EU market. Recent research projects the region’s big data and business analytics market size to hit $105B+ by 2027, with many sectors implementing digital transformation and ensuring their products and services are tech-enabled. Richard Lewis, an industry veteran with four decades’ experience in the technology industry will head up the European arm. He added, “I’m thrilled to work with the Bluechip team, having worked with the founders on a number of other projects throughout the years. As one of the leading data warehousing companies in Africa with an extensive track record of working with some of the biggest OEMs and enterprises, I believe we are well placed to offer immense value to businesses in this region and I am looking forward to building new connections in the coming months.” Bluechip specialises in collating data from disparate sources and transforming the data into information that helps businesses understand trends such as customer lifetime value of the customer, churn and how to make better business decisions based on data gathered. The company believes key to this is strong data professionals and recently launched Primo Academy, a programme designed to equip aspiring data professionals in Africa with the required skills to kickstart their careers in the data and emerging technologies industry. Part of the outcome includes placing some of the strongest talent emerging from the programme into businesses globally, helping to plug some of the worldwide data talent gap. Leading the European expansion is Richard Lewis who will be CEO of Bluechip EU Subsidiary across Europe.
