Mark Essien, a veteran in Nigeria's tech scene, launched his first startup, Hotels.ng, 14 years ago. Hotels.ng has not only endured but thrived, currently processing approximately 20,000 orders monthly and maintaining its status as a stable, profitable business. This extensive experience with Hotels.ng provided Essien with a profound understanding of the African travel sector and helped him forge crucial relationships.

Leveraging this deep industry insight, Essien's latest venture, Tripdesk, an AI-driven travel management platform, has achieved remarkable success, generating $2.3 million in revenue within just four months of its launch, with approximately 30% of this figure being profit. Despite this rapid financial success, Essien describes Tripdesk as a 'simple piece of software' from a technical perspective, benefiting significantly from his 14 years of experience in product development.

A critical factor contributing to Tripdesk's swift and profitable launch is Essien's 'secret weapon': the talent pipeline provided by HNG (Hotels.ng Internship). Founded by Essien in 2016, HNG is a rigorous, three-month remote bootcamp designed to train, test, and recruit top-tier software developers, designers, and product managers from across Africa and beyond. Essien attests that HNG grants him immediate access to exceptionally talented individuals, enabling him to 'build an army in a week' when new products are needed.

While Tripdesk took about a year to build, not a week, this extended timeline was due to the bureaucratic processes involving existing investors and the extensive gathering of customer feedback, which led to multiple product iterations. This approach, where a founder invests in and then taps into a solidified talent pool, mirrors that of Amadou Daffé, founder of Gebeya Dala, an interesting AI startup from 2025. Daffé also emphasizes the 'insane' amount of underpriced, world-class talent available in Nigeria.

Essien strongly advocates for companies to invest in building and even monetizing their own talent pipelines, citing HNG as a profitable venture that generates around ₦15 million monthly while costing roughly ₦2 million to operate.

Tripdesk was not conceived as a novel product but rather emerged directly from a persistent demand from Hotels.ng's VIP enterprise customers. For years, Hotels.ng's VIP unit served large corporate clients who required more than just accommodation; they needed a comprehensive system to manage the entire travel process, including 'bespoke travel arrangements.' These clients faced significant administrative friction, with requests passing through multiple approval layers (managers, controllers, finance teams), complex invoice splitting across various categories (hotels, meals, transport, reimbursements), and challenges in reconciling expenses and enforcing policies.

Tripdesk was developed to fill this gap, offering a solution where Hotels.ng could not. It integrates seamlessly with organizations' internal workflows: an employee submits a travel request, which is then approved by a manager, signed off by a controller, and all expenses are tracked, policies enforced, invoices generated, and reimbursements handled within a single platform. The 'AI' component of Tripdesk functions as a decision assistant, interpreting company policies, departmental rules, and contextual information to present approvers with all necessary data for instant decisions, drastically reducing the time spent on cross-checking documents.

By consolidating these fragmented processes, Tripdesk significantly reduces friction for employees and restores financial control for finance teams. The platform generates revenue through monthly subscription fees and service charges on bookings.

Despite serving only between twenty and thirty customers, Tripdesk has achieved $2.3 million in revenue, underscoring that each client represents a substantial revenue stream. Tripdesk caters to organizations with up to 4,000 employees spread across various regions. While Essien acknowledges the risk associated with relying on a small client base, he asserts that Tripdesk's customers highly value the product, making churn unlikely. He notes a customer requesting expansion into five West African countries beyond their Nigerian operations, indicating strong client satisfaction and demand.

Essien envisions Tripdesk as a pan-African product, with expansion plans on the horizon driven by both customer demand and the relatively small pool of potential enterprise clients, which could eventually lead to intensified competition. However, Essien remains unconcerned, offering strategic advice for navigating enterprise sales: avoid telcos, as they often have internal solutions. Instead, he suggests targeting large, quietly operating companies further down the value chain. With Hotels.ng acting as a funnel for these clients, any competitor would require similar leverage to effectively challenge Essien's new enterprise.