Ex-Alibaba Exec’s Crypto Startup Launches in Africa, Starts Hiring in Nigeria

INTRODUCTION
Floww Financial today announced its successful entry into the African crypto market, via the launch of its Nigeria operations.
The company now offers fiat-to-crypto, and crypto-to-fiat services on leading exchanges including Binance where it operates as a peer-to-peer merchant. 
Daryl Teo, the Chief Investment Officer and Founder of the company is enthusiastic about the region’s prospects and growing talent pool.
He has already hired local employees in the fields of Finance, Human Resources, Trade Operations and Customer Service.  
Daryl quipped,

“We have a near-term goal of building a strong local team and providing them with the opportunity to learn from some of the leading global talents we have. This provides us with a strong local know-how, whilst bringing best practices and the economies of scale we have from trading globally to iterate consistently. This allows us to deliver the best pricing, speed and service quality to both our B2C and B2B customers in the region.”

As a global entrepreneur who has had multiple successful exits over the past two decades, Daryl has seen it all. Some of Daryl’s former startups were acquired by large multinational corporations including Softbank, Konami and Paysafe Group.

He was most recently the Chief of Strategy and Senior Vice-President of Lazada Group, the largest E-Commerce company in Southeast Asia. Before that, Daryl was a Director and head of Digital Transformation for Singtel, which is Singapore’s national telco that has investment stakes in AIS (Thailand), Telkomsel (Indonesia), Maxis (Malaysia), Globe (Philippines), Optus (Australia) and Airtel (India & Africa).

Now, Daryl plans to contribute to the growing cryptocurrency scene in Africa. He is keen to explore opportunities with partners, who are interested in bringing their business onboard the blockchain. He elaborated more on the specific use cases, “Some industries are very ripe for adoption. Sellers on E-Commerce platforms want to increase sales by accepting crypto as an added mode of payment, whilst Payroll Management startups are creating alternatives as more employees prefer to receive their salaries in stablecoins (e.g. USDT), instead of the volatile fiat currencies such as the NGN.” Daryl also teased about his intentions to launch more projects in the African continent, by leveraging on his team’s proven track record in the Web 3.0 and NFT (non-fungible tokens) space. He is especially keen on exploring the intersection of blockchain technology, finance, sports and gaming.

He wrapped up with, “The recent AFCON showed us how the right stage can propel the beauty of Africa to global audiences. From the exhilarating matches to the inspiring stories of Côte d’Ivoire striker Sébastien Haller and the much-coveted Nigerian striker Victor Osimhen, we aim to do our part in continuing to bring the best of Africa to millions worldwide, and in that process, create value for local African communities, immediately and for future generations to come.”

With the African crypto market estimated to grow at an annual growth rate (CAGR 2024-2028) of 9.34%, the projected value is expected to hit a whopping US$653.1m by 2028 (Statista, 2024).

We will be tracking this space and Daryl’s startup closely, and hope that the Web 3.0 space can boost Africa’s growing economies in the years ahead!

About Floww Financial
Floww Financial is a licensed cryptocurrency exchange company that operates in the EU, UK and Australia.

Operating across countries including Turkey, Switzerland, Mexico and Nigeria, the company provides retail clients with quick fiat-to-crypto onramp services and supports B2B corporates with their own crypto-to-crypto order book exchange platform with spot and futures trading functions.

About Daryl Teo
Daryl was most recently the Chief of Strategy and Senior Vice-President of Lazada Group, the largest E-Commerce company in Southeast Asia.

In his role, he advised the Alibaba Group and helped them to manage $6B worth of projects and investments across East Asia, including China, India and the Middle East.

Daryl had also built up the Group’s public policy and government partnerships divisions and led company-wide ESG efforts across the payments, logistics and technology divisions.
Before this, Daryl was a Director and head of Digital Transformation for Singtel, which is Singapore’s national telco that has investment stakes in AIS (Thailand), Telkomsel (Indonesia), Maxis (Malaysia), Globe (Philippines), Airtel (India & Africa), and Optus (Australia).
Daryl was also the Head of Strategic Products at Grab Holdings, the largest ride-hailing company in Asia with investors including Softbank, Didi Chuxing, BlackRock and Morgan Stanley.

CONCLUSION
Having positively disrupted the transport, grocery and food delivery industries, Grab continues to be the top super-app in Southeast Asia, with more than 200M users worldwide.
Daryl is a widely-coveted speaker who recently spoke at the prestigious G20 Summit Indonesia, COP27 Egypt and APEC Summit Thailand.
As a certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt practitioner, he has consulted for governments and international bodies on key state strategies.