How Tunde Omotoye left his HR profession in Nigeria to start afresh in Canada

In this interview, I spoke with Tunde Omotoye, a Nigerian living in Canada about how he left his Nigerian job as an HR professional and started a new life in Canada where he's now a founder and CEO of his own startup. Tunde shares his experience settling in Canada and how he uses Zole to send money back to Nigeria.

Moving to Canada

Hi hi, how're you doing? Tell us a bit about yourself [that's the way HRs ask it right?😉]

Hi Michael, my name is Tunde Omotoye, also known as Tunde Tash. I'm the CEO and a co-founder of an immigration start up called HumanSquad and we have a product called Schooliply, which handles study abroad services for students looking to study abroad. We also have another product is called Travooly where we process visa services for students to study, work, and move abroad.

Wow…there’s a lot going on there. How did you get into all these? 🤔

I started off as an HR professional in Lagos and then I traveled to Canada to study HR and from there I pivoted to technology. I worked in corporate Canada for a couple of years, grew to be the head of the unit of a Fortune 100 company before I eventually left 9 to 5 to focus on my start up full time.

I can see how it all comes together now. 👍🏼

Yes,  I'll say I'm at an intersection of human resources, intersection of technology and also immigration. So I've been able to put that all together and offer value to people.

Finding the right app for international transfers

Well, thank you very much for that. Let's talk about sending money from Canada to Nigeria. How did you discover Zole App? 💙

Unlike many people I knew Zole App before it was launched.

Before then, I knew a couple of platforms that had also started. But when I heard about Zole App, I was like, wow, this, this one is different, right? The fact that you don't need an account number, you can just send somebody money using a phone number - amazing. I was like, wow, that's like really a game changer, right?

We get that a lot! 😅 What do you love most about Zole?

The fact that I can create a recurring payment to my family member back home. I can move money from Nigeria as a business owner. I get a lot of payments in Naira and I have to move money from Nigeria to Canada because Zole App has also been like a game changer for me in that regard.

I think what Zole App is doing today is different from what many other Remittance companies are doing. There are a lot of features that I love on Zole App. The fact that I can send money to somebody's user name without having to ask them for their phone number or even their account number. As long as they are registered on Zole, I could send money directly to their username.

Let's talk about being a business owner in Canada. What's it been like for you?

There are a lot of things to do as a business owner and one of those is to pay your employees. 70% or 75% of our workforce are in N\igeria, with an office in Nigeria, everybody being in Nigeria; that means we always have to pay salaries in Naira.

Before Zole, we always had to do some of these transactions manually. The finance manager goes into the account every month and then send these salaries one after the other, if we have a feature on Zole App where everybody, all the staff, a account or user name or whatever is, is just there and then we just maybe make it recurrent or we just go there and click something that just sends that money. I think that would be a game changer, right?

Now you mentioned that you do some work with Schooliply. How does that works, especially for your own company.

At Schooliply, we have about 11 partner schools in Canada. So Nigerians looking to come to Canada go to our website to apply and upload their documents. And once they do that, the application comes to us. We review and send to our partner schools. And because of the partnership we have with the schools, our turnaround time is usually about two weeks to three weeks for somebody to get gain admission to a Canadian school through our platform.

After the person gets the admission, we also refer them to our sister company Travooly where we offer them some percentage off our visa services.

That's great! At Zole, we help Nigerian students in Canada receive money from home and also send money back to Nigeria. We get a lot of transactions with descriptions such as 'school fees', 'pocket money', etc

I'm very big on the student community and I like that Zole has given back to the Nigerian community in Canada so many times over time. Just last month Zole gave out a scholarship. We had a winner who won the $1000 right Scholarship from Zole. There are a lot of features from Zole that many other platforms don't have.

Zole has the best rates, at least I know that. And it's without any service charge. And particularly that user name feature where if somebody has a Zole account, I don't need to ask for the account number or their email, I just send them money through that user name - that's really cool.

I'm blushing here! 😂 Last question, why would you say somebody should actually use Zole?

Apart from all I've said? Because Zole is the best!

Thank you very much, Tunde. This has been exciting.

Thanks, Michael for having me. Have a good one!

To experience speedy international transfers on Zole, start here.