Mrs Funmi Ogidan, the Chief Executive of Officer, CEO of Vapo, a travel technology company recently spoke with some journalists on the dreams and aspirations of her company, Adewale Ogunniran and Adebobola Alawode were there, she speaks on her dreams and administration of the company.
What is Vapo?
Vapo is a travel technology company that is trying to automate the process of the travel industry. Vapo has been appointed to automate the travel process of travelling agencies in Nigeria by the National Association of the Travelling Agencies, NATA in Nigeria. The core of our business is to take the manual process from office management to, what that means is that we ensure that everything concerning the applicant is adequately taken of.
We have a platform called the Vapo.net, this platform enables any applicant, it enables any applicant to do all what they need on the go. If you like you can call it the facebook of the travel industry.
It is a web application, what this does is make traveling process very very easy. The ticketing and hotel reservations of applications are taken care of without the applicant experiencing any hitch.
We have three major sections in Vapo, we have the visa processing, office management and the market place. The visa processing is where I thank every Nigerian intending to travel will be interested in because it provides you with the information that you need to make your travelling very easy.
This platform provides intending immigrants all the information to make their movement very easy.
All this does is to provide intending immigrants all they require to leave the country. It is like a one stop shop.
Basically Vapo has brought all these things together to ensure that immigrants are not made to undergo rigorous process when they want to travel.
I would also want to elaborate on the market place because this where all the travel agencies meet, they can showcase their wares there. To cut the long story short, we at Vapo has provided an all inclusive platform where applicants can interact and know what is required of them when they may want to leave the country.
What this Visa Advisory platform is all is about is to make sure that all the technical aspects are taken care of that the visa processing is actually simplified and automated.
Could you please give a brief background on how Vapo was conceptualized?
I have been in the travel agency for like 15 to 17 years, and I one worked with the Lagos State Government as the Principal Special Assisstant on foreign relations, while there I had to do so many official assignment for the government, I also had quite a number of principal assignments that I had to attend to. Unfortunately for me there was no software that could help me do that. There was no software that I could use, I was with the Lagos State House of Assembly, LSHA and I was the one handling all their traveling arrangements. With the nature of the job I was now searching online to see what could simplify my job but I couldn’t find despite having so many traveling applications.
Not until after several futile searches that I now said to myself that I can take this upon myself.
What are your dreams and aspirations for Vapo?
I see Vapo as an African technology company that would have sprung up. I have no doubt in my mind that Vaapo is another Yahoo or Facebook.
What has been the acceptability of Vapo?
We are just of how to push it out for the populace to accept. I don’t want any individual to patronize an unregistered travel agent that would lead to fraud or what have you? Vapo in my view is becoming an household name following the endorsement of NATA.the popularity may not be quite much for now but I know every single person that has come in contact with Vapo are amazed that they could not believe what they have been able to achieve with the software.
Let me also state here that Vapo was created to meet with international standards.
What are the steps being taken to popularize the Vapo application?
For now we are targeting the travel agents, but in no distant time we would start involving individuals, our primary aim is to capture the body that regulates the activities of travel agents.
What is your message to those who are hell-bent on leaving the shores of this country?
To those trying to leave Nigeria my message is ‘It is not rosy leaving this country because you don’t know what is out there. Some Nigerians outside this country are returning to the country to see what they can do. We should not think that it is greener outside this country. Nigeria has a whole lot of resources to rely on. What Nigerians need is serious hardwork, focus and also know what we are targeting. If we decide that we just want to go out there and do the menial jobs that mean we are leaving for the worst.
