Benin

Lapaire Glasses is a Kenyan eye care company and eyewear retail chain founded in 2018. It addresses a population until then excluded from the quality eye care market by offering free vision tests and prescription glasses starting at $30 (each pair of glasses costs between $30 and $100, with an average at $50), as well as premium customer service.

Today, Lapaire Glasses operates 20 optical stores across Africa and has over 150 employees. With the aim of becoming the most popular eyewear brand in Africa, Lapaire plans to open more clinics in major cities, as well as in rural areas.

Entrepreneurs

Graduated from the University of Geneva Law School, Jérôme Lapaire, a Swiss national and lawyer by profession, founded Lapaire Glasses in 2018 with his personal savings and money from friends, after realizing that access to quality eye care was a particularly burdensome problem in Kenya. The cost of an ophthalmological consultation, the time it takes and the price of prescription glasses are often too great a burden for a large proportion of the population. Gérôme Lapaire's portrait on LeTemps.ch

He is joined in this entrepreneurial adventure by Louis Gascoin, who holds an MBA from EDHEC Business School, specializes in operational excellence and distribution development, and has been based in Côte d'Ivoire since 2012, where he has built up solid professional experience in project development with multinationals such as Burger King, where he was General Manager from 2017 to 2020, and Servair as Head of Development and then Project Manager.

Partnership with I&P

Lapaire Glasses is supported by I&P through the I&P Afrique Entrepreneurs 2 (IPAE 2) fund, which is joined by AfricInvest in this round of financing. This partnership will help the company :

• Open 250 additional stores in 3 years, including expansion into 5 new African countries;
• Strengthen and structure management, operational teams and working capital for this new period of growth;
• Strengthen the company's IT infrastructure.

Expected impact

• Extend access to quality corrective eyewear and ophthalmic care to populations excluded from the conventional healthcare system ;
• Job creation.

Huilerie Royale TED is specialized in the production and sale of pure, virgin coconut-based table oil in Benin. Coconut oil is cold-extracted from coconuts. The finished product is used in the manufacture of food products, as well as a wide range of everyday products such as soaps, shampoos, cosmetics, detergents, paints and pharmaceutical products. 

The entrepreneur

The company was founded in 2017 by Towenan Armel Théodore AHIMAKIN, a Beninese entrepreneur with a degree in agronomy who grew up in a region traditionally producing coconut oil.

Partnership with I&P

Huilerie Royale TED is supported by I&P through the I&P Accélération au Sahel program:

• Obtaining organic certification, an essential element to develop the European market.
• Build up a stock of raw materials to support production growth
• financing various production-related expenses to ensure increased production capacity

PSSP Impact+ is a company specialized in the recovery and treatment of infectious biomedical waste in Cotonou, Benin.

The entrepreneur

PSSP Impact+ was founded by Dr Abdou Latif MOUSSE, a cardiologist. He has over 25 years' management experience as founder and General Manager of the Atinkanmey Polyclinic, one of the leading references in its sector in Benin. Before setting up his own polyclinic in 1996, Dr. Latif MOUSSE accumulated a wealth of experience in Benin, Côte d'Ivoire and France. Dr MOUSSE is very active in promoting and developing the private health sector through the Association Cliniques Privées du Bénin (ACPB), of which he is president.

Partenariat avec I&P

PSSP Impact+ is supported by I&P through the I&P Accélération au Sahel program. The aim of this partnership is to :

• Reinforcing bio-medical waste collection capacity through the acquisition of an additional 18.75m2 van, which can load around 20 garbage cans per trip;
• Building up a stock of spare parts and setting up a maintenance contract with the equipment manufacturer to anticipate any breakdowns linked to wear and tear on the processing equipment, and thus guarantee smooth, uninterrupted operations.
• Business development through the recruitment of a dedicated sales agent
• Strengthening the accounting and financial function and improving occupational health and safety practices in line with the requirements of its business sector, thanks to the implementation of an occupational health and safety manual and the training of technical staff

Normat is a Beninese company specializing in drilling-mining services and civil-use explosive distribution (mainly used in mines, quarries, and some construction sites).

Up to now, granite local quarry workers had to internalize drilling-mining activities because there was no specialized company. Normat is now a reference actor and has won several industrial Beninese actors' trust by offering services that respect international security rules concerning explosive shots (ISO9001/2015 law).
The company was created in 2017, following the split of this drilling-mining activity from the Bhélix company, which exploits various granite quarries in Benin and in which I&P invested in 2009.

The entrepreneur

Narcisse Zolla is a public works engineer and a former consultant in some Dutch cooperation. He has a Master's degree in Management from the Université de Bordeaux.
He also leads the company Bhélix.

Discover the interview of the promoteur of Bhélix and Normat (2019)

Partnership with I&P

I&P is commited to Normat:

• In formalizing this new company;

• In advising Normat to find the right resources and an efficient organization in operations management.

Main impacts

• The emergence of the specialized job of drilling-mining in Benin

• ISO9001/2015 norm accreditation

Tincy is an industrial bakery created in 2009 in Cotonou. Tincy produces and distributes bread to consumers through a shop, a network of 24 kiosks, more than 50 shopkeepers and professionals from hostelry and restauration sectors.

The bakery is launched in 2009. Initially conceived as a simple marketing exercise, the project proved to be a real success. In 2010, the turnover of the bakery exceeded the one of the consulting firm. Gatien Adjaboni is deeply involved in this new activity and has notably launched the National Association of Bakers of Benin, which gathers a dozen of professionals and represents to this day the only union in the sector.

The Entrepreneur

The company was founded by Gatien Adjagboni, a young Beninese entrepreneur who graduated from a French business school. He started his career at the Brtitish America. In 2006, he launched a consulting firm, named Tincy. The firm is still operational and employs about 10 people.

Partnership with I&P

I&P committed alongside Tincy to:

• Double the production capacity of the company

• Improve the quality and the management of the production and the distribution

• Diversify the products by starting making pastries

Impacts

• Increased availability of bread thanks to a dense network of distribution

• Structuring of the sector

CAROTECH Benin produces outside tiles, pavement blocks and other construction cement-based inputs. These are processed without any thermal energy. Carotech’s sector of activity is lifted by a swelling urban expansion in Benin and various state programs to renovate public infrastructures. The products are addressed to a diversified clientele: individuals, public collectivities, private companies…

THE ENTREPRENEUR

Yves Modest Agbo is a young Beninese entrepreneur who, once having finished his economics studies in France at Montpellier University has immediately made the choice to create an economic activity in his country, in the industrial sector with a strong local added value. 

PARTNERSHIP WITH I&P

I&P committed alongside Carotech Benin to:

• Enable a rapid establishment of the production

• Provide a technical assistance for organization and formalization of the financial and accounting management. 

• Provide support of an expertise in term of commercial organization policy

IMPACTS

• Creation of a local industry of construction materials, in substitution of Chinese and European importations.

• Energy saving with cold-process production

• 5 national suppliers

NoMAD (Le Nouveau Modèle Africain de Distribution), imports goods and offers a wholesale self-service to professionals in Benin. Nomad is now the main provider for traditional groceries and local minimarkets. In 2008, Nomad signed a master-franchise agreement with the French distribution group Casino. Since then, it undertakes the brand implementation in local stores in Benin. Nomad found its place in a market shared between family monopoles destined to the upper-class and the expatriates on one hand and informal corner shops on the other.

THE ENTREPRENEUR

Adedogni Abimbola degreed from Toulouse Business School. After a senior executive career at Decathlon, he projected to develop a distribution chain linking the foreign brands to the African market, wishing to respond to the middle class growing demand in the sub region.

I&P Partnership

I&P is committed alongside Nomad to:

• Invest in the communication of the Casino brand

• Enable it to equip itself with a performing computer system

• Help it to get financial managing tools allowing an effective follow-up of the activity

Impacts

• Number of jobs created: 25

• Local distribution chain

Bhelix is the first SME in Benin to produce norm-adjusted gravel responding to laboratory set quality standards.

So far, construction firms had to produce their own gravel because of the broadly artisanal and informal nature of the market. Bhélix aims at the normalization of a formal offer for inputs destined to construction companies.

L'ENTREPRENEUR

Narcisse Zolla is a civil works engineer and former consultant for the Dutch cooperation. He also graduated in management from the University of Bordeaux.  

PARTENARIAT AVEC I&P

• Financed its investment plan (equipments, transport machine and management system)

• Realized a technical audit of BHELIX's production plant

• Advised BHELIX to find high-quality resources and improved management operations

IMPACTS

• Setting up of a norm-based material production chain in Benin

• More than 20,000 tons of granite sold in 2015

• 7 local suppliers