Terry Obel

Chief of Staff and AI Product Lead

2024

In this role, I focus on leading AI product-market strategy for DDI's AI platform, fundraising for impactful AI initiatives, and optimizing company expansion and operational efficiency.

Board Advisor and Director

2021 - 2024

In this capacity, I set up Livara’s board and I’m actively supporting the management team on fundraising, organisational structures, governance and growth strategies .

Growth and Strategy Director [Interim]

2021 - 2021

Founded in 2014, Livara is Uganda’s leading natural and organic hair care and skin care brand that adds value to locally grown plants by manufacturing cosmetics products. In addition, Livara retails its cosmetics in exclusive brick and mortar stores across the country and also operates three fully fledged Centers of Excellence that have ultra-modern natural hair salons that cater to the entire family. As the interim Director overseeing operations, growth and strategy, some of my achievements have been • Increased sales revenue to almost double in spite of the Covid 19 pandemic and multiple country lockdowns • Systemized Livara to allow for operational and data visibility • Set up the marketing and finance departments to highly efficient independent teams • Restructured the team and set up performance incentives that allowed the team to perform much better while improving culture

Head of Product (Electric and Software)

2023 - 2023

BURN is Africa’s largest, end-to-end, modern cookstove company providing world-class R&D, manufacturing, and carbon offset projects. My department created product roadmaps from conception to launch, drove product direction, defined go-to-market strategy, and led research and design in partnership with cross-functional teams/areas to deliver customer facing hardware products and applications as well as building all internal tools to support the sale, financing and support of our new customer base. In this role, I achieved the following: 1) Setting up both Software and Hardware Product and Engineering Design teams to deliver a new line of electric consumer products for urban Africa. This involved hiring, accessing existing prototypes and creating a pathway to scale, setting up development processes plus ways of working to execute this. 2) Built our Induction Cooker PAYGO products that were an interaction with the firmware, hardware and software systems that saw our customers move from 50% repayment rate to 93% repayment rate for the electric financed product offering. This validated our core value proposition assumptions in core markets. 3)Rolled out electric Induction cookers and cookware (both PAYGO and non PAYGO) in Kenya, Tanzania and Ghana 4) Saw full product compliance and payment integrations for 5 core markets with 7+ others in the pipeline across Africa and Asia 5) Built, rolled out and Improved core software systems for our customer acquisition, call centre, production line, credit assessment, processes repair and warranty processes in Kenya and Tanzania. 6) Defined and set the hardware strategy and roadmap for the next 2 generations of Induction Cookers and cookware as well as a coherent software strategy and roadmap to enable the validation, build, sale, support, maintenance and repair of these electric products and other B2C products across various business functions.

Product Director [Interim]

2017 - 2023

Venture Builder

2021 - 2023

The Factor[e] Venture Studio now Delta40, aims to build high-impact ventures from scratch to exit in energy, agriculture, WASH, and mobility sectors that address Sub-Saharan Africa’s greatest income inequality and climate challenges. We build ventures by obsessing over customer problems, using an iterative & high velocity venture design process, and building diverse, experienced & collaborative teams. 1) - I joined Factor[e] Ventures as part of the founding team to launch the Venture Studio from scratch. 2) - Led the WASH Portfolio with a primary focus on a hardware sanitation venture that is reinventing the toilet to meet the needs of future cities in Sub-Saharan Africa while supporting a Software Water financing venture. In this role, I designed and drove the venture roadmap from idea conception, building toilet prototypes enabling us to test and validate core technology assumptions and product, pricing, market fit. I also defined go-to-market strategy, led design and strategy discussions as well as managed budget and resources.

Senior Software Product Manager, Mobile Innovations

2019 - 2021

Fenix International,now acquired and rebranded to Engie Energy Access, brings clean, reliable energy for lights, phones, radios, cooking and more to over 3 million people across Africa on lease-to-own financing through affordable instalments over mobile money. Aside from my day to day Product Management work, my key achievements include: • Pioneered and leading Fenix’s mobile strategy and roadmap (including pilot solutions) focused on field based customer onboarding, portfolio & credit management and customer support at a global level. This effort has seen significant operational efficiency and reduced cost of operation by up to 40% • Coaching teams within Fenix and externally on agile $scrum, user interactions, user research, mobile strategy and product management. • Leading the Fenix software internship program • Developed an objectives and KPI focused framework for all the product managers to use for their annual and quarterly goal setting and tracking. • Served as a founding member of the Fenix cultural committee, which, in conjunction with the CEO, is responsible for nurturing the culture at Fenix and resolving any challenges people are having, at a personal and global level across the company. • Part of a small team that took on the complicated task of job grading all roles at Fenix in order to achieve pay equality • Heavily involved in Fenix’s technology eco-system initiatives in Africa and have been a representative and speaker at various key engagements including meetings with the President of Uganda, Innovation Awards, Women in Tech and Africa Conferences etc

Software Product Manager

2018 - 2019

Key Achievements included - Lead Fenix’s efforts in decentralizing the core software platform and building targeted functionality for our remote field teams using mobile technologies so they can on-board and service our customers efficiently. Some key achievements include: • Rolled out a mobile application that saw significant business value in the 1st year of launch: 40% reduction in cost of sales, 240% increase in sales without scaling the call center, 400% time reduction in customer on boarding and 2% improvement in loan repayment. The app continues to deliver significant business value through new functionality and iterations • Launched the app in all markets of operation in various languages • Trained and continue to support app adoption and usage with in country teams, the app maintains over 60% usage across all countries • Leading migration efforts of the app to a more scalable platform that would offer better performance especially on low resource phones in poor network areas. • Heavily involved in Fenix’s technology eco-system initiatives in Africa and have been a representative and speaker at various key engagements including meeting with the President of Uganda, Engie Innovation Awards, Women in Tech and Africa Conferences etc • Part of the inaugural culture committee at Fenix which develops and launches new ideas for nurturing Fenix’s culture as we grow. In addition to ensuring we have more fun, the team also gives input on and helps address significant new culture issues as they arise.

Entrepreneur In Residence

2017 - 2018

BBOXX is a next generation utility company developing solutions to provide affordable, clean energy to off-grid communities in the developing world. BBOXX is headquartered in Kigali and London and has sold power units in over 35 markets. • Did product research and system conceptualisation of two special projects ----BBOXX Gas: A project that aims to provide access to LPG & LNG to the rural poor communities using Pay As You Go technology. ----BBOXX Connect: A project that aims to provide Internet access and smartphone financing to the rural unconnected world.

Hardware and Software Product Manager, SmartCook

2015 - 2017

KOKO Networks is building technology to enable smart last mile distribution of ethanol as a sustainable cooking fuel alternative to charcoal & kerosene for developing markets. KOKO has over 1 million customers and is based in Nairobi and rapidly growing with offices in London &India 1) Joined the company as employee #1 and led KOKO’s efforts in setting up, recruiting and managing KOKO’s research, operations, customer support and sales & marketing teams for the SmartCook product suite in Kampala and Nairobi 2) Defined and product managed the first 3 - 5 iterations of the fuel dispensing public kiosk (KOKOpoint), 2 burner ethanol cookstove, the smart canister, smart tanker as well as all the software systems that the customer integrated with. All, with a distributed team of product designers, engineers, researchers and operations personnel in multiple countries to get our products market ready 3) Acquired 1st customers for KOKO and managed pilots in Kampala and Nairobi 4) Later settled in a Software PM role, managing software product management for KOKO’s core customer suite of products: a public kiosk’s interface, a mobile application and business reporting dashboards. 5) Conducted extensive user experience product research, market analysis and product testing to figure user pain points and gather data to inform KOKO’s product strategy and assess opportunities. Pilots and RnD projects ranged from assessing content streaming, internet distribution to GIS mapping of all alternate competing fuels in Kampala and Nairobi etc 6) Set up KOKO’s initial upstream and downstream logistics operation of cooking fuel which involved closing and maintaining partnerships with ethanol producers and chemical suppliers, ethanol transporters, petrol stations owners and local shop owners.

Analyst and Project Manager

2014 - 2015

• Joined the company as employee #1

Product & Business Lead, Co-founder

2011 - 2014

Co-founded a Mobile Games Development company based in Uganda in 2011. Kola Studios originally focused on digitalizing traditional African games and availing them through mobile platforms, and along the way pivoted to a software consultancy company. My achievements and contribution were as follows • Led the team’s fund raising efforts and closed our angel investment round. • Drove product management and business analysis across 5 game titles built on Android, iOS, Windows 8 and Facebook platforms. • Was responsible for the Product User Acquisition drive for our games. In 2013, our flagship game, Matatu, saw a 50x increase in daily games played, 20x increase in monthly active players. • Matatu also ranked as the No.1 downloaded game in Uganda for two (2) years straight on the Google Play Store starting 2013 and is still one of the most downloaded apps in the country. • Tasked with the responsibility of figuring out the company’s revenue model and generating sales, I drove the Kola’s business development efforts for our new innovative advertising model. Closed Kola’s first big advertising deal with a top teleco in Uganda and generated four major sales leads that all shortly converted thereafter.

Business Development Intern

2012 - 2012

• Supported the local business development team to implement the marketing and local support mainly across Google Plus, Google Trader and Google for Education suite.