The Coffee Idea That Became Africa’s Top Mobility Company: MAX’s Exciting Seven-Year Journey

8 min readAug 3, 2022

The MAX story is one of how a discussion over coffee would go on to disrupt the African mobility space.

As part of the festivities around MAX’s 7th year of dominating the African mobility space, we thought we would walk through the highlights of MAX’s journey so far.

The Genesis

Adetayo Bamiduro and Chinedu Azodoh both attended MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in the United States and graduated with honours.

The inspiration from project discussions and class assignments gave birth to the ingenious idea of breaking free from the constraints of traditional courier services.

At the time, delivery services were only able to get goods and services to their eventual end-users within a 3 to 4-day period.

Leveraging on their combined experience, with 15 years of e-commerce, cloud computing, management consulting, and investment banking expertise, they would create an API that facilitated a unique ecosystem for automated requests and crowdsourced delivery and would cut delivery time to within 3 hours, starting with Lagos, Nigeria.

MAX could now facilitate e-commerce growth, with merchants all too happy to take advantage of MAX’s new platform. This model would help satisfy existing customers and even help acquire more.

The Birth of the MAX Champion

With an increased demand for delivery drivers (Champions) via the MAX app, MAX decided to create a holistic program that would become a landing place for drivers across the city.

The MAX network continued to grow with more drivers (Champions) finding a home with MAX. MAX began to train drivers and cater to their well-being on and off the job. This way, they could build themselves up and serve clients better.

By 2017, MAX’s technology and strategies went on to help more businesses as well as individuals across Nigeria. With well over one million trips completed, positive buzz spread afar, becoming an attractive prospect to investors.

This helped MAX raise NGN400 million (US$1 million) through the securitization of vehicle leasing receivables through a private company bond program.

The deal represented the continent’s first securitization of vehicle loan assets, excluding South Africa, as well as the continent’s first bond issue and asset-backed bond transaction. The bond’s first series, worth NGN400 million, was sold as a private placement to pre-qualified investors and was completely subscribed to.

Sourcing High-Performance Vehicles For Commercial Drivers

The proceeds have been utilized to finance MAX’s expanding asset financing program in Nigeria and abroad, notably for cars, two-wheelers, and three-wheelers, including electric vehicles.

With these resources, MAX empowers more drivers across Africa with needed vehicles, thereby creating more employment and growing the economy. This is evidenced by the 18,000 plus drivers that have benefited from MAX’s programs so far, creating the largest vehicle subscription in Africa.

The Venture Into Electric Mobility

Ecofriendly mobility systems that could serve Africans efficiently and cost-effectively became the next endeavour. MAX wanted to develop technologically advanced electric vehicles for business and private use.

The market was not necessarily rich with options in this category.

MAX saw this as an opportunity to get African mobility up to pace with emerging global transport technology.

In the future, world transport modes and systems will be heavily reliant on and infused with electric technology.

Hence, innovation and local ingenuity became the main driving forces for MAX, This led to the creation of the M1, Africa’s first indigenously designed, developed, and commercially manufactured electric two-wheeler.

To date, MAX electric vehicles are being used to help local businesses thrive, by way of cutting down on costs that come from moving goods through traditional fossil fuel-burning vehicles.

For six years now, MAX has led the way in African electric mobility, with the M1, the M2, and now the M3. The M3 has emerged as the most technologically advanced electric passenger carrier by an African firm for the African community.

The technology on the M3 was designed to help businesses and individuals get more done with less maintenance and charge time. This is typified by the Battery Swap Technology which the M3 is equipped with. Drivers can swap depleted batteries for new ones within minutes of getting to a battery swap station.

The $31 Millon in Series B Funding

MAX also subsequently secured $31 million in the first close of a Series B fundraising transaction headed by Lightrock Global Ventures. MAX previously raised nearly $40 million in institutional debt for driver financing, which was followed by the Series B closing.

The Series B investment is now propelling the company’s worldwide development into Egypt, Ghana, Cameroon, the East, and Southern Africa.

Following that, MAX has continued to deploy electric vehicles and charging infrastructure, as well as provide financing and financial solutions to over 100,000 drivers.

Proparco, Novastar Ventures, and Yamaha also participated in the oversubscribed round.

MAX’s Resilience

MAX has had to be resilient in the face of government policies that disallowed motorcycle taxi rides within MAX’s main city of operations, Lagos.

The unexpected turn of events was cause for displeasure both on MAX’s side and on the side of passengers who had come to rely on these rides to beat traffic.

MAX’s Pivot and Multi-State Partnerships

Known for its resilience and constant innovation, MAX forged on. The operations in Lagos were streamlined to handle business logistics concerns, while the rest of its operations were moved to neighbouring states.

MAX’s pivot in its mode of operations saw the company grow and double its number of Champions year on year.

In the aftermath of MAX’s multi-state service expansion, the Ekiti State government partnered with MAX to address the safety and security problems related to motorbikes, or Okadas, as they are known in the local parlance.

MAX then moved on to digitize and alter the state’s informal motorbike and tricycle transportation with proprietary technology, MetroGov.

MetroGov is a secure urban mobility platform that provides identity management, remote monitoring, crime prevention, digital payments, and financial auditing solutions using next-generation technology.

MAX has now taken its solutions to other states as well, including Osogbo, Osun State, where the Government of the State of Osun, under the leadership of Governor Gboyega Oyetola, has inaugurated 1,000 tricycles to ease the transportation burden for the citizens of the state.

The MAX-Bolt Partnership

MAX also collaborated with Bolt to develop the Bolt vehicle finance scheme in Nigeria, allowing up to 10,000 Nigerian drivers to participate.

This program was part of Bolt’s commitment to empowering ride-hailing drivers to own vehicles with low equity payments, as well as providing drivers with assistance and increased earnings while allowing them to experience the freedom of being vehicle owners.

The partnership also aimed to help Nigerian drivers become more efficient by providing access to a variety of value-added services like low-to-zero emission automobiles, licenses and permits, insurance, inexpensive health care, and other financial products.

The East Africa Connection

The Rwandan Investment Fund (RIF) also invested in MAX to support our expansion into East Africa.

RIF lauded MAX’s “disruptive and impactful” mobility solutions and was delighted that more African sectors, particularly in East Africa, would be able to join the mobility revolution.

Distinguished Members of Endeavour

MAX leaders, Adetayo Bamiduro, Chinedu Azodo, and Guy-Bertrand Njoya were invited to be members of the distinguished Endeavor network of high-impact entrepreneurs in honour of their work, enriching local entrepreneurship and revolutionizing mobility in Africa.

Inspiring the Next Generation

MAX teamed up with Eko Invention Centre for its 3-month Startup Accelerator Program to increase opportunities for ideation and innovation while also benefiting Nigerian youths.

The innovation journey does not end with technology platforms like MAX, which believes that it is critical to ensure that emerging solution providers are well equipped to take Africa to even greater heights.

The MSBN/YAMAHA Partnership

In order to finance and maintain more than 50,000 vehicles up to 2024, Moto Business Service Nigeria (MBSN), a division of Yamaha Motor Corporation of Japan, entered into a strategic partnership with (MAX).

The collaboration is now effectively assisting MAX to grow operations in Nigeria, Ghana, and Cameroon, as well as accelerating our aim of serving 100,000 independent commercial drivers by the end of 2023.

MAX in Abeokuta.

MAX sought to assist a booming city in flourishing even more.

Then executives paid a visit to the Alake of Egbaland to enter into discussions about extending the economic benefits of electric mobility and neoteric technology to young Africans and creating 10,000+ jobs in Abeokuta.

Now MAX is fully operational in Abeokuta. The 35-year-old Abatan Samuel, who paved the way for many others to follow, became our first MAX Champion in Abeokuta.

In addition to other inventions, MAX created a multi-faceted framework that focuses on Champions’ health, well-being, and morale (drivers), to assist in providing a better experience for both drivers and passengers.

MAX stands strong today because of its people, Champions, and Customers. Our community consists of stakeholders who believe in MAX’s vision for the future of African mobility.

Keeping up with neoteric developments in mobility means that MAX always has to be at the cusp of emerging and cutting-edge technology.

This has led to multiple partnerships with private, business, and government entities. MAX is still building the largest vehicle subscription platform in Africa, focusing on cars, two-wheelers, and three-wheelers, as well as electric vehicles.