Millions of Nigerian people lose 2–5 hours daily waiting in long, disorganized queues at banks, hospitals, and transport hubs. Customers experience frustration, missed appointments, and reduced productivity.
Businesses and institutions suffer revenue losses, abandoned transactions, and operational inefficiencies. Most organizations also lack real-time data to optimize staffing or understand customer flows, perpetuating inefficiency.
The cumulative effect is a cycle of lost time, reduced satisfaction, and economic leakage across the Nigerian physical economy.
In this edition of Techparley’s Drive100, we shine the spotlight on Qatalyst TechLabs Limited, a Nigerian startup that is redefining the way citizens experience essential services.
Founded by Anslem Anirejuoritse Pessu, the startup combines technology, practical design, and real-time analytics to eliminate chaotic queues and improve operational efficiency.
As Anslem puts it, “We give people back 2–5 hours of their day, reduce stress, and make essential services faster and more predictable for millions.
Born From Pain, Built for Millions
Qatalyst was not created in a boardroom, it was born from frustration, lived experience, and a moment that made its founder rethink how millions of Nigerians lose precious time daily.
As Anslem Pessu recounted, his turning point came on a hectic afternoon when he visited the bank to pick up his Mastercard. After hours of waiting, an attendant handed him a slip with the number 126, a moment he described as the point where “his entire day collapsed.”
Unable to wait or return the next day, he walked out with a single thought ringing in his mind: “There has to be a better way.” That painful experience became the seed of a bold innovation.
On May 2nd, 2025, the idea crystallized into Qatalyst, a system designed to reclaim wasted hours and transform how people access essential services.
Anchored by the promise of “turning wasted hours into productive minutes,” Qatalyst stands as a solution shaped by personal pain but engineered to serve millions facing the same daily struggle.
Why Qatalyst’s Existence Matters to Everyday Nigerian
Qatalyst TechLabs addresses one of Nigeria’s most pervasive and overlooked challenges, that’s inefficient, unpredictable queues that waste time, drain resources, and frustrate both service providers and users.
“In Nigeria, waiting is a way of life. At banks, hospitals, government offices, and even at small retail centres. People lose entire days standing in queues that should have taken minutes,” Anslem noted.
Its name reflects the startup’s mission to be a catalyst for operational transformation in essential services.
Unlike conventional queue management solutions that assume reliable power and internet, Qatalyst is designed for Nigeria’s unique infrastructure challenges, with solar-powered kiosks and an offline-first digital system that ensures continuity even during outages.
This approach makes it accessible for banks, hospitals, and transport hubs in urban and semi-urban areas alike.
As Anslem highlights, “Instead of treating poor connectivity as an exception, we built our system around it, using USSD/SMS as a fallback to ensure the queue never stops.”
How the Startup Operates: Features and Benefits
Qatalyst integrates hardware, software, and analytics to create a seamless queue management ecosystem. The startup doesn’t just track queues, it transforms the entire service experience for customers and businesses.
Qatalyst key features include:
Solar-Powered Kiosks: Can operate independently of the power grid, ensuring consistent service.
Offline-First System with USSD/SMS Fallback: Ensures customers can join queues even without internet access.
Real-Time Dashboard: Provides managers with instant insights into queue length, wait times, and customer flows.
Multi-Platform Access: Customers can join queues via kiosk, mobile, or SMS, enhancing convenience.
While key benefits indicate:
- Customers regain 2–5 hours daily that would have been wasted waiting.
- Businesses increase operational efficiency by 40% or more and reduce lost revenue.
- Institutions gain actionable data to optimize staffing, resource allocation, and service delivery.
- ROI is achieved in under three months, demonstrating immediate value and scalability.
By addressing both the customer experience and business operations, Qatalyst creates a win-win system that modernizes essential services while reducing economic inefficiencies.
Progress, Traction, and Milestones by Qatalyst
Qatalyst has successfully built and validated a fully functional MVP, demonstrating the core logic of the queue management system through a live cloud-based dashboard.
This allows the startup to simulate deployments and build trust with potential partners before physical kiosks are installed.
Upcoming Milestones (Next 12 Months):
- Secure seed funding to manufacture 50 solar kiosks.
- Deploy pilot kiosks in three strategic locations, including a bank, hospital, and transport hub.
- Onboard the first paying customers and demonstrate operational efficiency improvements.
- Achieve six months of stable, revenue-generating operations.
By focusing on technical validation first, Qatalyst ensures that partners see a tested, reliable system before committing to physical deployment.
“We focus on relationships and offer performance-based pilot terms to de-risk the decision for our partners,” the founder explains.
Meet the Team Behind Qatalyst
Qatalyst’s success is rooted in a balanced team combining technical innovation, commercial strategy, and experienced guidance.
Anslem Anirejuoritse Pessu (Founder and Product Architect): Leads system design, hardware integration, and software development.
“I bridge the gap between complex engineering and real-world application, ensuring our solution is rugged and reliable for Nigeria.”
Ebeli Ebimobowei (Co-Founder and Business Lead): Drives market entry, partnerships, and fundraising strategies, leveraging deep knowledge of Nigerian markets.
Abel Sifuna (Backend Engineer): Ensures platform scalability, security, and real-time data processing.
Mary Gatogoh (Junior Business Developer): Supports outreach, partnership onboarding, and market research.
Solomon Tarosi (Business Adviser): Provides high-level guidance on scaling, commercialization, and investor relations.
The team’s diverse expertise allows Qatalyst to tackle both technical and commercial challenges, ensuring the solution is not only innovative but market-ready and scalable.
Challenges and How Qatalyst is Overcoming Them
Qatalyst has encountered and addressed several critical challenges which revolve around:
Building for Nigeria’s Infrastructure Reality
Problem: Unreliable electricity and internet could undermine the core system.
Solution: Offline-first architecture with USSD/SMS fallback. This approach has become a competitive advantage.
Proving the Concept Before Physical Deployment
Problem: Convincing partners to adopt a system without prior deployment.
Solution: Fully functional live dashboard for demos and performance-based pilot terms.
Hardware Cost and Durability
Problem: Rugged, solar-powered kiosks were more expensive than initially projected.
Solution: Modular design using local suppliers for cost-effective, upgradable units.
These strategies have turned potential weaknesses into strengths, preparing Qatalyst for market-scale deployment.
The Vision Behind It All: DreamForge Labs
At the heart of Qatalyst lies a deeper mission powered by DreamForge Labs, an innovation studio created to challenge one of Africa’s most persistent mindsets, that’s the belief that progress and opportunity exist only outside the continent.
While many young Africans map out their “japa” routes in search of greener pastures, DreamForge Labs champions a radically different vision.
As the founder asserts, “Africa doesn’t need to escape. Africa needs to build.”
In their view, every frustration, every queue, every power outage, every broken system, is not a curse but a call to innovate. DreamForge Labs was founded precisely to transform these everyday challenges into homegrown, scalable solutions that serve the continent.
Qatalyst, described as “the opening chapter” of this vision, represents the studio’s commitment to proving that African realities deserve African-engineered answers, bold, practical, and built for millions.
Vision, Expansion, and Targeted Impact for Qatalyst
6–12 Months: Deploy 50 kiosks across Lagos in banks, hospitals, and transport hubs; onboard the first paying clients; demonstrate rapid ROI.
2–3 Years: Scale to five major Nigerian cities, deploying over 500 kiosks; launch Q-Insights, a SaaS analytics platform for actionable operational data; achieve N700M+ in annual revenue.
5-Year Vision: Become the default queue and crowd management solution across West Africa, expand into sectors like agriculture, government services, and event management, and establish itself as critical infrastructure for Africa’s physical economy.
“We aim to be recognized as critical infrastructure that digitizes and brings efficiency to the heart of Africa’s physical economy,” Qatalyst concluded.
Talking Points
Qatalyst TechLab presents a compelling and deeply relevant solution to one of Nigeria’s most pervasive operational challenges, yet its path forward requires careful strategy and disciplined execution.
While the founder’s lived experience and the team’s engineering effort give the product authenticity and technical strength, the startup still faces the classic hurdles of hardware-dependent innovation in Africa, high manufacturing costs, durability risks, and the difficulty of scaling physical infrastructure across diverse environments.
Its reliance on kiosks, even with solar power and offline capabilities, may also limit rapid adoption compared to purely software-driven solutions that scale faster and more cheaply.
Additionally, Qatalyst’s ambitious multi-channel ecosystem, mobile app, USSD, WhatsApp, and rugged hardware, demands strong coordination, consistent uptime, and robust customer support to maintain trust.
The vision is powerful, the need is undeniable, and the engineering foundation is impressive, but Qatalyst’s long-term success will hinge on cost-efficient deployment, strategic partnerships, and the ability to convert its innovative promise into sustained, revenue-driven adoption across institutions that are often slow to embrace change.
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