Danladi Verheijen
Interview with Danladi Verheijen
CO-FOUNDER and CEO, VEROD
Lives in: Nigeria
In 2008, Danladi Verheijen co-founded Verod Capital Administration, a personal fairness funding agency centered on West Africa. How we made it in Africa editor-in-chief Jaco Maritz interviewed him about his journey as an investor and the teachings he has learnt alongside the best way.
Subjects mentioned throughout the interview embody:
- The deal that put Verod on the map
- Backing Moniepoint, an African unicorn
- Why he likes the health club enterprise
- His hardest moments as an investor
- Lengthy-distance working as a metaphor for enterprise
Watch the complete interview beneath:
Interview abstract
One of many offers that put Nigeria-based funding agency Verod Capital Administration on the map was an funding in beverage cans.
In 2009, Verod acquired a forty five.3% stake in GZ Industries (GZI), an aluminium can producer that provides brewers and gentle drink producers. The funding supplied GZI with the capital to construct its first manufacturing facility. Till then, beverage cans had been imported into Nigeria from as far afield as Latin America and Spain. As Danladi Verheijen, co-founder of Verod, places it: “You’re transport air from Latin America.”
GZI commissioned its first manufacturing facility close to Lagos in 2010, adopted by a second plant in Aba, in southeastern Nigeria. It expanded past Nigeria in 2020 with a facility in South Africa, and most lately opened a manufacturing facility in Kenya in early 2026.
Verod has exited its place in GZI over time, together with partial gross sales in 2012 and 2015.
Founding Verod
Verod was began in 2008 by Verheijen and his associate, Eric Idiahi. They’d recognized a scarcity of long-term capital for West African entrepreneurs trying to develop their companies.
The early years had been robust. The non-public fairness trade in West Africa was nonetheless younger, which means Verod needed to win belief on two fronts. “You needed to persuade entrepreneurs to belief you, and these entrepreneurs weren’t used to getting third-party capital into their companies. We [also] needed to persuade traders that West Africa was investable, which [was] additionally a little bit of a problem.”
With no observe report to level to, Verod began with actual property investments, figuring out it was a sector the traders it hoped to draw had been already acquainted with. “We did a few actual property offers within the early days as a result of we thought we might get cash for actual property offers simpler,” Verheijen says. Because the agency constructed its credentials, it moved away from property and into the consumer-focused companies that make up its portfolio as we speak.
Investing in gyms
One in all Verheijen’s favorite investments is i-Health, a series of gyms based in Nigeria in 2015 by entrepreneur Foluso Ogunwale.
Regardless of working solely round 30 shops, i-Health is already seven instances the scale of its nearest competitor in West Africa – and Verheijen sees vital room for development. “Our membership base is mainly 1% of 1% of the inhabitants of Nigeria. It’s actually nothing. We’re nonetheless simply scratching the floor,” Verheijen says. “I feel [in] the UK, possibly 16 to 18% of the inhabitants goes to a health club. Within the US, it’s 25 to 30%. So actually, we may very well be 1,000 instances bigger.”
Past Nigeria, i-Health is eyeing growth into Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.
Betting on training
Verheijen can be bullish on training. Final 12 months, Verod bought its stake in TAG West Africa, which operates Lancaster College Ghana. The establishment presents college students a UK diploma at a fraction of the price.
“There’s plenty of demand for training,” Verheijen says. “Households will do something to make sure that their youngsters get a high-quality training. They’ll make all of the sacrifices which can be needed to do this.” The trick, he explains, is backing operators who can construct robust manufacturers and earn the belief of fee-paying mother and father.
However conventional training is capital-intensive – campuses, lecture rooms, workers – and that makes it sluggish and costly to develop. For Verheijen, know-how presents a approach round these constraints. “Almost definitely the best way to satisfy the scholars the place they’re is through know-how.”
The case for humility
One of many classes Verheijen has taken from almost twenty years of investing is the significance of humility. Unstable markets like Nigeria, he says, punish overconfidence.
The agency operates in an surroundings the place it always must study. “We should be very reflective,” he says. When a deal delivers robust returns, the workforce asks itself whether or not the result was the results of ability or luck. When an funding disappoints, the query is whether or not the issues might have been foreseen.
“It’s not at all times us,” Verheijen says. “And when you at all times suppose it’s your self, then there’s a specific amount of hubris, and also you don’t study and also you don’t develop. We’re solely pretty much as good because the final fund.”
Lengthy-distance working as a metaphor for enterprise
“There aren’t a whole lot of instances the place I’m not working,” Verheijen says. “I discover myself working or fascinated by work virtually across the clock.”
On the events he does step away from the workplace, Verheijen is an avid long-distance runner and has accomplished marathons around the globe, together with Tokyo, New York and South Africa’s Comrades ultra-marathon.
For Verheijen, the game is a metaphor for enterprise. It calls for psychological fortitude and the braveness to even attain the beginning line. “Each bone in your physique says, this doesn’t make any sense. Let’s simply give up now,” he notes. “And also you get midway via, you wish to give up. And then you definitely say, hey, look, I’m already midway. It doesn’t make sense to return to the start line. Let’s simply get via this.”
He additionally values the camaraderie – one thing he sees mirrored in non-public fairness. “It’s actually a individuals enterprise,” he explains. “Regardless that working typically feels such as you’re working alone, there’s additionally this sense of, , you’re all on this collectively.”
“I actually take pleasure in working and simply the sense of freedom it provides me and readability of thought and simply actually pushing my physique,” he says. “It’s not glamorous, nevertheless it’s actually enjoyable, which appears like what it’s prefer to construct a personal fairness agency on this area.”
