The serial entrepreneur has already founded five firms and its fintech solutions leverage blockchain technologies to secure and facilitate financial transactions between users.

 Aronu Ugochukwu (photo) is a young Nigerian entrepreneur and the co-founder/CEO of fintech startup Xend which provides payment and management tools to SMEs

Thanks to its innovative solutions, Xend (founded in 2019) helps businesses make online and offline payments, and manage their inventory among other things.

In 2019, Aronu Ugochukwu also founded crypto bank Xend Finance with the support of  Binance and Google Launchpad. The bank offers up to 15% interest annually on deposits. Its Web3 is open for developers and it claims to be Africa's first DeFi (decentralized) company and also the first African company to be listed on Binance Smart Chain. In August, it launched XendBridge, a blockchain payment API (application programming interface), and SwitchWallet, "an enterprise-grade wallet provision service."

The serial entrepreneur also founded Wicrypt, a smart wifi network that allows users to get paid by sharing their wireless internet connection with others. "Wicrypt is providing last-mile internet to people of the world who need it, while leveraging the blockchain by having hosts stake $WNT [ed. note: the startup's cryptocurrency] to become a part of the Wicrypt Network," he explained in 2021.

In 2016, he founded IT service company Ugarsoft. Before co-founding, instant delivery platform Ogwugo (the first Nigerian firm to accept bitcoin payments).

Given his young age and the numerous ventures he has already launched, one would believe that he has always been an entrepreneur but, this is not the case. He also has a professional career. In 2014, he joined KPMG Nigeria as an IT advisory associate. From September 2015 to June 2016, he was a software developer for IT services and consulting firm Lloydant Business Services.

Melchior Koba