Nigeria's Ahavaplan Helps Event Planners Ditch WhatsApp Chaos

Event planners across Nigeria are getting their sanity back, one booking at a time.

Christine Imoukhuede launched Ahavaplan earlier this year to solve a problem she knows intimately after planning more than 30 events herself. Most Nigerian event planners juggle inquiries through WhatsApp threads, track payments in Excel, and can only manage as many events as they can mentally keep straight.

Ahavaplan changes that by putting everything in one place. Planners get a permanent link for clients to reach them, a pipeline tracking every inquiry from first contact to final payment, and a portal where clients review proposals and approve work.

The platform also includes Ella, an AI assistant that writes client proposals, builds budgets in Naira, creates timelines and task lists, and alerts planners when events start falling behind schedule. It's like having a full-time assistant without the overhead.

Imoukhuede started building Ahavaplan in 2021 while working at Apple, then left in 2023 to focus on it full time. She initially launched in the United States as a mobile wedding marketplace that grew to more than 650 planners and 80 events over two years.

But American planners already had plenty of tools. Planners back home in Nigeria had nothing built specifically for them, so Imoukhuede closed the US product, moved home, and rebuilt Ahavaplan as subscription software for the Nigerian market.

The Ripple Effect

The response has been remarkable. Within the first eight weeks, 160 planners started free trials, converting from a database of 700 planners Imoukhuede built before launch. That's three times the monthly pace the American product ever achieved.

The first three paying customers chose the Pro plan, and Ahavaplan now runs 5 to 10 demos every week. A planner community of more than 2,500 members and content reaching over 3.5 million people means customer acquisition costs stay low.

Right now, Ahavaplan focuses deliberately on Nigeria, targeting Lagos, Abuja, Enugu and other major cities before expanding to Port Harcourt, Edo and beyond. Over the next year, the startup plans to launch a vendor directory with negotiated discounts for planners and a community encouraging industry collaboration.

The company will then tackle onboarding and booking venues before entering Ghana as its second market. Kenya and the rest of the continent follow in the five-year plan.

Imoukhuede describes the vision simply: Nigeria-first and Africa-bound, bringing professional tools to an industry that's been making do without them for far too long.