A few years ago, Ivan Morais’ colleagues laughed when they heard about his plans for a new business venture. “They said, ‘Angola is not a digital market,’” Morais recalls of what turned out to be a pivotal conversation. “And I said, ‘It’s going to be sooner or later because all the world is going digital.” When COVID-19 hit last year and countries across the globe had to lock down, those same individuals did a major about-face. He muses, “They all said, “Whoa, you were so right!”
Indeed he was, as Angola-born Morais was sitting at the helm of what is currently one of the Central African country’s largest online shopping platforms, MeuMerkado.com. The online marketplace, which grew exponentially throughout 2020, boasts more than 100,000 active accounts, 60,000 active clients per month, 660,000 visits per month and more than 400 transactions per day. It provides sellers with direct access to the market while giving buyers the chance to save time and money by reducing search time for products and allowing them to compare prices in real time. It’s something that was never available in Angola before it launched in 2018. As Morais notes, “Angola has a production information problem. No one knows who produces what, where or when. Most of the time, people in Angola would import products from other countries just because they didn’t know where to buy them in their own country. They had no idea that their neighbor might be selling a product that they need.”
Morais wanted to create a solution to that problem, and he found the answer when he began taking courses at MIT Sloan Executive Education.
The Future is Now
An entrepreneur at heart, Morais began his career at Angola’s top construction insurance company and ultimately founded his own construction firm, which is known for rehabilitating the country’s fourth-longest bridge over the Giraul River in the Namibe province. In 2015, the budding magnate was introduced to executive education by a friend who was taking classes at Harvard. Morais, who attended middle school in Portugal and high school in the United States, started reviewing the course options at Harvard, but he soon expanded his research and discovered an even better fit at MIT Sloan. “I was focused on the future. My main objective was to get ahead of [other] business entrepreneurs,” Morais reveals. “MIT is known for technology, and I’m more focused on business technology. So I enrolled.”
Immediately, Morais knew that he had made the right decision. After he was introduced to the concept of Bitcoin in a Macroeconomics course, the cryptocurrency took off. “It happened just like the professor said it would,” he notes. So, when he took Platform Strategy with Professor Pierre Azoulay in 2018 and learned about the platform business model, he fully embraced the information and quickly conceived the idea for an Amazon-like marketplace for his home country. In fact, he simultaneously designed the platform while participating in the class. The result was MeuMerkado.com, which means “my market” in Portuguese. “Once you log in, you really feel like you own the market, and the market is in the palm of your hands,” he says. Today, MeuMerkado.com is home to everything from technology and household products to food items and more. “We sell almost everything. We provide the biggest selection of content in the Angolan digital market, we have great packaging, good customer experience and we deliver products in a timely manner, which sometimes includes the same day,” he continues. “And we give visibility to small stores, many of which don’t have a website. Now those stores can put their products on the platform and compete with big enterprises.”
Morais created the platform under the umbrella of the official parent company he founded, Crijaza, for which he serves as CEO and which he named in honor of his wife and daughters (the word is a combination of their names). He also launched a second platform, SimplesMila.com (named after his mother), which connects insurance brokers with clients and allows the former to provide real-time insurance quotes to potential customers. Crijaza’s premier platforms have performed exceedingly well, and the company has plans to expand; it will launch MeuMerkado.com in Mozambique, Namibia, Kenya and Malawi within the year. Morais reveals, “My plan is to be the biggest platform in Africa.”
"I never want to get behind, and I always want to learn more. I want to look at the future and know what’s going to happen, and [MIT’s] courses are a great way to deal with that."
A Real ACE
Morais has no doubt that he will be able to achieve his goal, and he attributes much of his recent success to his work at MIT Sloan. And while he recently earned his Advanced Certificate for Executives (ACE), he never actually intended to take his studies that far. “When I started, I just chose classes that were important to me,” he says. In addition to the platform strategy course that helped him formulate Crijaza’s online marketplaces, some of the courses that stood out to him were Understanding Global Markets: Macroeconomics for Executives, Neuroscience for Leadership and Digital Strategies for Transforming Your Business. He even took Macroeconomics twice because he felt there was so much great information that he did not want to miss. “I have taken some amazing classes,” he asserts, adding that when he realized he was only three courses short of the ACE, he decided to go for it. In February, he was awarded the Advanced Certificate.
While he is a resident of Angola, Morais dedicated himself to traveling to the United States to take his Executive Education classes in person on the MIT campus, often signing up for courses when he was in town for a meeting or during the summer when he was stateside to visit friends. He never even considered taking a virtual course until the pandemic. “I think it’s so beneficial when you’re actually there on campus,” he explains. “You get so much more out of it. You get to talk to the professors and your classmates, and you get to build a network. You get to share your experiences in the classroom, and that’s really important. You just learn so much.”
Though Morais officially completed his Advanced Certificate for Executives, he is not done with MIT Sloan. In addition to being part of the affiliate alumni list and having access to exclusive programs, articles and webinars, he continues to take courses to this day. “I never want to get behind, and I always want to learn more. I want to look at the future and know what’s going to happen, and [MIT’s] courses are a great way to deal with that,” he says. “I always want to innovate my business. A person who doesn’t innovate doesn’t go forward. From these classes, I get so many ideas so I can build my business, and I can make sure that business is sustainable.”
For Morais, the ability to bring effective business ideas to Angola is key. “Since I am from Angola, I wanted to make sure that I helped other people here. I wanted to take what I learned and build a business here,” he concludes. “The courses [at MIT Sloan] really give you an advantage. I want to be successful, and I look forward to learning more and to using my knowledge in my business as it grows. MIT is like a ladder for me to make sure that I grow my business.”
Learn more about MIT Sloan’s Executive Certificates.