Tête-à-tête with Ashifi Gogo, founder and CEO of Sproxil
Ashifi Gogo, Founder and CEO of Sproxil. Photograph: Sproxil
Offering brand protection services in emerging markets, Sproxil works to ensure purchased goods are not stolen or counterfeit. The company's CEO speaks out on their innovative work
Sproxil is a venture-backed enterprise that provides world-class brand protection services in emerging markets. The company's Mobile Product Authentication (MPA) solution helps ensure purchased goods are not stolen or counterfeit by allowing consumers to verify product genuineness within seconds through a text message.
Compatible with any tangible item, Sproxil's solution is widely used by leading pharmaceutical companies to curb the multi-billion dollar counterfeit drug industry. The company has also penetrated non-pharmaceutical industries including personal care, automotive aftermarket and food supplements. Sproxil has won the IBM SmartCamp Boston Award and the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative Outstanding Commitment Award, as well as received regulatory endorsements in Nigeria and Kenya. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Sproxil continues to expand across Asia and Africa.
Recently, Sproxil's founder and CEO Ashifi Gogo was named Social Entrepreneur of the Year by the Schwab Foundation. Dr. Gogo was one of 37 awardees pioneering solutions for social and environmental challenges including urban revitalisation, renewable energy, unemployment and more.
Can you tell us how winning the prestigious Schwab Foundation award in March has impacted your business and plans for the future?
Recognition of Sproxil's work through the Social Entrepreneur of the Year award creates greater awareness of the global counterfeiting problem and the work being done to combat it. The prestige of the award boosts interest in use of our solution from potential partners, clients, and users, which creates opportunities to protect more products and consumers.
How will your role as an innovative company continue to flourish and assist you to develop your authentication product in new markets and with various innovations underway?
The award has further validated our plan to deepen the reach of our solution in markets where we currently operate, as well as helping us to expand to new markets so that more consumers can engage in the war against counterfeiting. While we cannot disclose specific expansion plans, we will continue creating innovative solutions that will positively impact more lives.
Our mission is to work with organisations and industries to provide technology solutions that improve the quality of life of individuals and societies. We develop our solutions to reflect this goal and we continue to focus on empowering and protecting consumers.
What was the impetus behind your BCtA initiative?
To set long-term objectives that we can be measured against to help us stay on course as we grow rapidly.
What was your ideal job before your current role?
Teenage Internet startup millionaire in the 90s?
What was the tipping point in getting into your current professional role?
A switch from an academic focus on mathematics and physics to engineering, and success at business plan competitions while in graduate school.
What is the single most important thing to do in order to be successful?
A single thing? Cross your fingers. Two things? Focus and execute.
What qualities do you most admire in a person?
A measured balance of silence and speech in conversation.
Who would you describe as your international business hero or villain?
None
What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery in either business or development?
Cluelessness
Who is your favourite author?
None
What is your personal motto?
Focus, execute and enjoy yourself.
Content on this page is provided by Business Call to Action, and originally appeared on the The Guardian Business and the Sustainable Development Goals Hub