Ari Ljunggren and Joshua Tolsdorf, Master in International Management students at FGV EAESP, Brazil, explore how the social enterprise Pricepally scaled from an idea to a 212-employee venture to enable the needy to access food at cheaper and ethical prices.

Ari Ljunggren and Joshua Tolsdorf FGV EAESP School of Management Winners of the CoBS 2026 Case Development Challenge, part of the Advanced International Certificate in Responsible Business Practices. With kind acknowledgements to Pricepally Founder & CEO Luther Lawoyin.

The Weight of a Shopping List

It is the first Saturday of the month in Lagos, Nigeria. Omoni, a 34-year-old private school teacher, sits at her kitchen table before sunrise. She works through her budget with the focus of someone who has done this too many times to get it wrong. Her monthly salary is roughly ₦200,000 ($145). Before she pays rent or any other necessity, she must set aside ₦104,000 ($75) for food. More than half her income is gone before the month has properly begun.

Omoni is far from an outlier. The average Nigerian household spends over 50% of its income on food, placing the country among the top five globally on that measure.^[1] For reference, in Germany and the United States, that share is roughly 10% and in Brazil, it is 25%. For Omoni, the budget leaves almost nothing for emergencies, savings, or aspirations. What makes this harder to accept is that Nigeria is not a country without food. It has 36.8 million hectares of arable land and 38 million smallholder farmers.^[2] The problem is not the harvest; it is everything that happens between the field and the table.

A Broken System

Nigeria’s food supply chain fails in stages, and each failure compounds the next. Smallholder farmers, who produce 98% of the country’s domestically consumed food, sell into a web of middlemen that inflates costs long before produce reaches a market stall.^[3] By the time Omoni buys her tomatoes, they have passed through several hands, traveled roads where drivers pay informal tolls at multiple checkpoints, and sat in conditions ill-suited to keeping food fresh.^[4]

Seasonality amplifies the struggle. When a crop is off-season, prices spike. When macroeconomic shocks hit, such as the 40.9% Naira devaluation and the 39.84% spike in food inflation seen in 2024, the entire supply chain is sent into a convulsion.^[5][6] Transport costs surge, and farmers find that the cost of seeds and fertilizer has moved beyond reach.

Pricepally: The Flywheel Begins

Pricepally was founded in 2019 by Luther Lawoyin, a serial entrepreneur who believed this problem was solvable if approached structurally. His strategy was simple: remove any link in the supply chain that did not provide clear, corresponding value.^[7]

When COVID-19 arrived in 2020, informal markets collapsed. Pricepally, granted permission to operate as an essential service, became indispensable. While six digital competitors failed by treating the market as a source of extraction, Pricepally embedded itself within wholesale networks, hiring staff who understood the language and relationships of the traders at the core of the system. As Mr. Lawoyin reflects: “We make plans, then Nigeria edits the plans.”^[8]

Today, the company operates across four cities with 212 employees, and prices run 15–20% below market rates. When Omoni opens the PricePally app, she orders tomatoes, three types of pepper, onions, rice, yam, and protein. She blends and freezes her stew base, rationing it across five weeks. Her average order saves her roughly 20% compared to her local market.^[9] For a teacher on her salary, that is the difference between the month working and the month failing.

Everyone Rises

The most striking thing about Pricepally is how its interventions reinforce one another. We see this as a cycle running on four interconnected loops:

Starting on the farm, guaranteed offtake agreements allow farmers to borrow against the certainty of a buyer. By accessing Mastercard-backed credit at rates far below local alternatives, farmers can afford better seeds and inputs. This leads to higher yields; the farmer earns more, and Omoni pays less.

As order volumes grow, forecasting improves. Pricepally can tell a farmer in June what demand will look like in September, enabling planned harvests. Less waste means better margins, which feeds back into more competitive pricing, attracting more customers.

Scale enables B2B contracts with major chains like Chicken Republic. These provide “anchor volume” that keeps farmer agreements viable year-round, steadying prices for individual consumers even during the volatile off-season.

There is also an equity loop. During a 2024 seasonal surge, when contracted drivers abandoned routes for higher-paying work, Mr. Lawoyin noticed the female drivers stayed. That observation became the HER Programme. Pricepally now recruits and trains women, providing tricycles on a lease-to-own basis. The “last mile” became a source of employment and asset ownership, turning a logistics vulnerability into a pillar of reliability.

Impact Under Pressure

No virtuous cycle runs without friction. Mr. Lawoyin has navigated two Naira devaluations, a pandemic, and record inflation, and the business has held together.

Their upcoming Series A seeks approximately $10 million, split between grant funding for farmer infrastructure and equity for growth. While the business has demonstrated the ability to reach profitability in intervals, this capital injection targets a transition into sustained, long-term profitability within 18 months of investment.^[10]

However, outside capital introduces a classic tension: the challenge of mission-alignment. As investor timelines enter the picture, there is a risk that the “flywheel” could be pressured to spin toward high-margin consumer goods, potentially loosening the farmer-link that gives the model its integrity. To preempt this, Mr. Lawoyin is building governance into the foundation: formalizing impact measurement, pursuing ISO 26000 certification, and integrating the HER Programme into the core expansion plan rather than treating it as a side-car initiative.^[11]

Pricepally: A Model Worth Watching

Pricepally’s approach has earned international recognition, including the WFP Zero Hunger Sprint and selection for the UNDP Growth Stage Impact Ventures.^[12][13] With plans to enter Nairobi by 2027, the company is proving that food insecurity, youth unemployment, and urban inflation are symptoms of one structural failure.

None of that, however, is what Omoni thinks about on the first Saturday of the month. She just knows that her order arrives the next morning, the tomatoes are fresh, and the numbers work. For a teacher running a household on $145 a month, that is enough.

Note: The authors conducted two primary interviews with Mr. Luther Lawoyin, CEO and founder of Pricepally, in 2026. AI tools were used for stylistic editing; all content and analysis are the authors’ original work.

View the footnotes to this article.

---

Useful links:

• Link up with Ari Ljunggren and Joshua Tolsdorf on LinkedIn
• Read a related article: Social Enterprise: 21st century jigsaw
• Read this and other student cases in the special edition magazine Global Voice #36
• Discover FGV EAESP School of Management, Brazil
• Apply for the FGV EAESP Master of International Management.

Learn more about the Council on Business & Society

The Council on Business & Society (CoBS), visionary in its conception and purpose, was created in 2011, and is dedicated to promoting responsible leadership and tackling issues at the crossroads of business, society, and planet including the dimensions of sustainability, diversity, social impact, social enterprise, employee wellbeing, ethical finance, ethical leadership and the place responsible business has to play in contributing to the common good.  

• Follow the CoBS on LinkedIn
• Download magazines and learning content from the CoBS website downloads page.

Member schools of the Council on Business & Society.

• ESSEC Business School, France, Singapore, Morocco
• FGV-EAESP, Brazil
• School of Management Fudan University, China
• IE Business School, Spain
• Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, India
• Keio Business School, Japan
• Monash Business School, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia
• Olin Business School, USA
• Smith School of Business, Queen’s University, Canada
• Stellenbosch Business School, South Africa
• Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
• Warwick Business School, United Kingdom.