He learned trade from his mother. Now he’s building a pan-African marketplace.

David Chima’s tech journey began with the deep-seated belief in the mechanics of trade. It was a philosophy shaped in the busy markets of Owerri, Imo State, in South-East Nigeria by his mother, a civil servant who ran a trading business to supplement her income.

Chima now applies those early lessons in trade to Kuraway, a business-to-business (B2B) platform that serves as a digital intermediary for suppliers and retailers across the continent. To understand him, however, one must look at the boy who learned the foundations of trade by observing his mother’s side business, the mechanics of supply and demand and, later, turning a university campus into his logistics laboratory.

How it started

Chima’s entry into business began in childhood. He credits his early exposure to the grit of Nigerian commerce to accompanying his mother,  an administrative staff member at the Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO), to the market as she supplied the customers of her side rice business.

“Civil servants in Nigeria don’t earn a lot,” he says. “So, she has always tried to find extra sources of income. Her major [source of extra income] was rice distribution. She somehow found a major warehouse that could give her a discount, and then she resold at a premium [price]. She also owned a business centre [where] they did printing.”  

By the time he gained admission to study Materials and Metallurgical Engineering at FUTO in 2021, Chima started his own trading business.

The Aba business: A student’s logistics masterclass

While in school, Chima launched a venture supplying custom-tailored clothing and branded T-shirts, an operation that required a precise workflow. 

In 2018, during his third year, the Student Union Government (SUG)— the representative for students in higher institutions—engaged him to source souvenirs for 4,000 to 5,000 new entrants. 

“What we did for SUG was go to Aba, source clothes, brand them, and [deliver] to [the students],” he recalls. “We became a major contractor for SUG. Whenever they wanted to produce polos, they called us. At the time, I was more like a middleman.” 

The process was a rigorous exercise in end-to-end management: “If you wanted to get the clothes, we first inquired, What’s the quantity you get?’ Then we agreed on a design. Right after agreeing on this design, we agreed on a payment method,” he explains.

Because it was a contract, Chima often had to fund the production out of pocket and was only “paid after supplying.” He built relationships with bulk producers in Aba, Abia State, a commercial hub that hosts some of the biggest markets in Nigeria. This positioned him to act as a bridge between the factory and the campus. 

Delivering orders from Aba was straightforward; he relied on the local transport system: “There are a lot of buses that go from Aba to anywhere,” Chima says.

This operational model varied depending on the client. For the larger institutional contracts, Chima managed the entire production cycle before seeing a return. 

“We have producers in Aba. We [used to] do bulk production for SUG,” Chima says. 

However, for smaller entities and private organisations, he adopted a different structure:  “For individuals, they paid upfront–sometimes they paid 50%, sometimes 70%–and then when we supplied, we got the balance.”

He later expanded beyond campus, supplying clothes Aba to customers outside the university, including members of his church during a centenary programme.

He continued the business even after graduating in 2021.

An attempt at building a digital marketplace

Entrepreneurship is rarely linear, and in 2020, Chima faced a significant setback when the global pandemic brought economic activity to a standstill. 

The previous year, he had attempted to tackle Nigeria’s rental inefficiencies through a product called Housing Zone. The timing, however, proved difficult.

“The idea was to find properties, list them on this platform, and help people rent their homes faster,” he says. “It was a housing marketplace. When COVID-19 hit, we were not able to go out. [There was] no way to sell it,  onboard new people, new houses, or new agents.”

The venture folded, but the slowdown gave him time to recalibrate. 

In 2022, he returned with a new venture:  Bondly, which he co-founded with Isaac Edmund, who now serves as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). The startup began as an escrow payment solution–a service that holds funds or documents on behalf of transacting parties–designed to bridge the trust gap between African merchants and global buyers hesitant to pay upfront. 

Kuraway and the pivot

As the market evolved, they realised that they needed to layer escrow onto “something [bigger]”. 

In  September 2024, Bondly pivoted to Kuraway – a name Chima says is “coined from kura, a Japanese word for ‘storehouse.’” 

Kuraway now operates as a B2B trade platform, competing in a market that includes players such as Sami, Fluna, and Brydge.

Kuraway serves as a central sourcing hub for merchants across sectors such as agro-commodities, chemicals, and cosmetics. The platform enables global buyers to find suppliers across African borders, a crucial step for initiatives such as the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Once matched, payments are processed through the platform, ensuring transactions are secure and traceable. 

The pivot was not an abandonment of escrow, but an integration of it into a broader marketplace model. 

“We just layered the marketplace onto the escrow products [we had already built]. That’s the pivot that happened. The escrow is totally dead; it’s just that this time around, it is optional,” Chima explains. 

The pivot has begun to generate traction. Now headquartered in Lagos with a team of 10 full-time staff, the company has expanded beyond the garment clusters of South-East Nigeria to support merchants in Ghana and Cameroon. 

To date, he says the platform has facilitated more than $600,000 in trade and supports over 1,300 businesses.

“It’s more like replicating what we were doing [in university], but this time around, on a platform,” he says.

Looking ahead five years, Chima is focused on scale.

“Our vision is to be the go-to platform for trade in Africa. Think of it like the Alibaba for Africa,” he says. 

His motivation blends impact with  ambition: “Personally, [my motivation is] to create the solutions we ought to have in Africa, then become stinkingly rich.”

When he is not navigating the complexities of cross-border B2B trade, Chima swaps the digital marketplace for the chessboard. 

“I play chess,” he says, a fitting hobby for a founder who has had to think several moves ahead, from the markets of Owerri to the broader landscape of African commerce.