Folake Edun, Female CEO Disrupting Secure- Tech Industry
HAVING observed a trend in rising trade, tourism, and foreign investment in Africa, Folake Edun, co- founder Towntalk is passionate about creating sustainable solutions to address the impact of insecurity on businesses in the continent.
This passion led her to co- founding, Towntalk, a data intelligence company committed to providing the security industry in emerging markets with the software and tools to support the realtime delivery of core security services.
Edun teamed up with Disun Vera- Cruz and Dr. Tomiwa Erinosho to start Towntalk with a mission to build Africa’s most robust security intelligence and response infrastructure.
It first built an innovative data collection model by steadily growing a community of 45,000 trusted sources, created through strategic collaborations where verified individuals and emergency responders were given access to their area. The strategic integration of community engagement and technology enables Towntalk deliver early warning alerts, navigation, and periodic reports to businesses, travelers, and mobile workers at scale.
In 2022, the company has recently launched pulse as a service, which pow
ers security, companies to upsell services to their clients and provide insights when needed the most. It believes that this will grow the revenue of security companies overwhelmed by market pressures to lower the cost of their current services.
Edun explained that the company has helped the community and business owners in Nigeria at the peak of the pandemic. “Towntalk gathered data when security and safety were on people’s minds at the height of COVID- 19”.
The company is also taking this further by creating a Travel Safety Package that allows travelers in new and unfamiliar locations receive location- relevant security briefings and real- time support.
Edun has aligned her values of transparency and inclusion with the operations of Towntalk by demonstrating her passion for creating more representation in a male- dominated tech space. To do this, she mentors young women and has modeled her company to be 70 per cent women- driven.
Her unwavering commitment to changing the narrative for data collection in Africa is paving the way for a more sustainable future for young Africans, but most importantly young African women.