TANNAZ Bahnam used to be nomadic in nature. But you would not blame her. In addition to her brief as marketing executive for an international media platform, National Geographic, which meant she had to regularly travel, selling advertisement, she is also adventurous to a fault, wanting to see the world and explore it to the limit.
This explains why she has been able to journey to several countries, almost everywhere, in a space of 15 years. She has been to Serbia, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, London, United States of America, Mexico, Ecuador, Kazakhstan, Puerto Rico, among others. Through it all, however, one factor remained constant; never did her stay exceed six months in any of those places. But a project trip to Nigeria about five years ago challenged all that.
On getting to Lagos, Nigeria, Tannaz, an Iranian, fell in love with the city, its people and the all-round buzz. She then found love in a Lebanese professional who had resided in Nigeria for 12 years, working with an Oil & Gas servicing company. There was no going back; she was hooked for good. They got married and her nomadic life was momentarily checked.
Residing in Lagos was, however, not going to be a stroll in the park. One used to some level of organisation in accessing services wherever she went, she groped whenever she needed a service or product. “I travel a lot. But when I came to Lagos, I found it so difficult to find shops, restaurants and a host of other simple services I required. I thought it would not be possible that there are only few places that people tell me about all the time; there has to be other places. So, I started going round; if I see anywhere that looks like a shop and a service unit, I would go in there and patronise or just see what services they had to offer. This is how I got to know this city very well,” she recalls.
As she got to know more places and made more friends, people started asking her, much later, where she got this or that. And instead of getting harassed on the phone, she decided to put everything in a website and making all the contacts available like a working directory. That was how the idea of lostinlagos.com started as a lifestyle solutions platform for people of all status and races in Lagos.
In addition to the pro bono services she provides on the website, with companies and service providers getting listed for free, the initiative has since grown to involve the periodic hosting of a free market platform, Lostinlagos Live, where service providers and product vendors get to interface with customers. With the idea getting bigger and becoming more accepted, as it is now the tradition, another edition of Lostinlagos Live was held at the premises of Federal Palace Hotels in Lagos last month. That was the fourth edition.
It is now two years and a couple of months since Tannaz’s company has been around and about Lagos. Of what essence is the initiative, she is asked? “I want people to get to see the creativity and potentials of Lagos. Lagos has immense potentials and so much to offer, yet people do not realise it. So, I want people to get to know the businesses and opportunities that abound here more. My website, lostinlagos.com, of course, gives a lot of businesses exposure but not everyone would get to go to the shops listed on the site. So this is to get people to have direct access and communication with the businesses through a platform like this, which is called ‘LostinLagos Live.’ This affords the business owners the opportunity to talk to customers more about their businesses just as it would present the customers a direct access to the goods, instead of just seeing them on the website,” she says.
The feedback since starting out, she confirms, has been good. “What we wanted is a very sophisticated, well-organised kind of event and every year, we learn something new. This year, we did a lot more marketing because we wanted to get as much people here as possible. It is important that our vendors get value for money and our visitors are also happy.”
lostinlagos is an online guide to Lagos. It provides everything people need to know about Lagos and it is for everyone, not just for professionals. It provides such direction as to where people may want to hang out at the weekend, enjoy nightlife in Lagos, do shopping, or which hospitals they could visit. It covers every aspect of life in Lagos. Tannaz further explains: “The idea was conceived to create a platform for people to promote their businesses because I found that there are so many businesses choked up behind the walls; people do not know about them. They depend too much on word-of-mouth. This may be good sometimes, but it does not take the businesses to the next level.
According to Tannaz, lostinlagos.com gives businesses free listing all year round. The website is a premier guide to Lagos. “This caters to all forms of business – restaurant, shops, hotels, home and care, a spa, night life, hospitals, jewelries and so on. It is about everything people may want to know about Lagos; it is a platform that enables Lagosians access to diverse products and services.
“Besides, there are so many places in Lagos that most people who have lived here all their lives do not know. Some even think it is difficult to live in Lagos but it is not. There are also a lot of services and products that could be found in Lagos but which people ignorantly travel abroad to get. For me, I think people have not discovered Lagos until they have discovered these places. Indeed, Lagos is a great place to thrive and enjoy; it is a tourist hub.”
Her evaluation of the effects of her present preoccupation is soul-lifting. “The feedback from the people, vendors and other people has been very good. The website is the most informative and up-to-date around about these services. Through what we do, we make sure that standards of products and services are also raised in Lagos. If you want people to come here for tourism, you need to have certain standards. This is what is missing here. There are very low standards set. What we also do with the website is allow people to write reviews, rate businesses so that the businesses know what is good or bad about what they are doing. Also, buyers, consumers and visitors are happy that they can now relate to these businesses as to the services they are offered; they are able to review or make complaints on the website and subsequently the businesses are able to correct observed lapses.”
Over the five-year period she has spent in Lagos, Tannaz is already raising a wonderful family. First, she is enthusiastic that with her son, Gabriel, she could alongside her husband, start the family’s first generation of Nigerians. But beyond this, her sister, brother-in-law and mother have all moved into Lagos. “My mother has been here for a while; she likes it and I think she might stay too. My sister just moved here from London; the people have made her love Lagos. She also loves it here,’ she says.
Reliving how she came to settle in Lagos, Tannaz says: “I came here to work, met my husband and sealed the deal. I came here about five years ago, met my husband in the second month, a year later, we were married. Then I started lostinlagos.com and that was it.”
Since then, her love for Lagos has also grown in leaps. And she is not shy to tell the world: “I love Lagos, I think it is one of the most vibrant and energetic cities because it really has so much life; the people are so happy and energetic. It is the people that make Lagos what it is; without them, it would be a different city. I love the people; they are friendly and kind. This makes all the difference.”
An Iranian by birth, Tannaz grew up in the United Kingdom and lived long in New York. But she describes the people in those places as “very cold and stand-offish.”
She adds: “They are not very friendly. But here, people make you feel welcome. Today, I have some of my best friends in Nigeria. It is completely different. Also, here in Lagos, you get to meet and know a whole lot of different people; it is very diverse, it is a melting pot of people from all over the world.”
In spite of her love for the city, are there things she would want changed? She answers in the affirmative.
“Of course, Lagos has its problems. There is no city without its faults. The traffic could be hellish. The Police too are a problem; they do not always do their job properly. It is also a tough city to work in; it is very competitive, if you could get through it, then you can succeed like you have never succeeded anywhere before. If there are things I want to bring to Lagos, it would be more organisation and direction. If the power situation is addressed and there is 24-hour supply, it would be a completely different city. But I think it has a lot more positives and potentials. The future is so bright in Lagos.”
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