In Nigeria, WhatsApp isn’t just another messaging app — it’s infrastructure.
Businesses use it for customer support, order updates, payments, onboarding, and daily communication. Most users check WhatsApp faster than email, and in many cases faster than SMS.
So when startups need to verify users, send notifications, or automate support, WhatsApp is usually the obvious choice.
The problem? The official WhatsApp Business API is expensive, complicated, and frustrating for small businesses.
That’s why I built Achek.
Achek is a platform that lets businesses send OTPs, run AI chatbots, and automate customer communication directly through WhatsApp and Telegram — without going through the usual Meta verification headaches.
Why I Started Building Achek
I kept seeing the same complaints from developers and startup founders:
“SMS OTP delivery is unreliable.”
“Twilio doesn’t work properly for some Nigerian numbers.”
“The official WhatsApp API setup is too expensive and takes forever.”
And honestly… they were right.
For many African startups, the existing options create too much friction:
Facebook Business verification can take weeks
You often need a registered company before approval
Pricing becomes expensive at scale
Most providers charge monthly fees before you even launch
Integration complexity is high for small teams
For a solo founder trying to launch quickly, it’s a nightmare.
I wanted something simpler:
Connect a WhatsApp number in under a minute
Start sending OTPs immediately
Add an AI support bot without complicated infrastructure
Keep pricing affordable for African businesses
That became Achek.
What Achek Does
Achek currently supports:
WhatsApp OTP Verification
Businesses can verify users using WhatsApp instead of SMS.
This improves delivery reliability, reduces failed OTP attempts, and creates a better user experience for regions where SMS infrastructure can be inconsistent.
AI Customer Support Bots
Businesses can run GPT/Gemini-powered chatbots directly on their WhatsApp or Telegram accounts.
The bots can:
Answer customer questions
Handle complaints
Capture leads
Book appointments
Verify payments
Check order status
Escalate conversations to humans
Notifications & Broadcast Messaging
Businesses can send updates, reminders, confirmations, and announcements to customers at scale.
Telegram Bot Support
One thing I’m especially excited about is that the same AI engine now works across both WhatsApp and Telegram.
Different transport layer. Same backend intelligence. Same tooling system.
The Platform Architecture
Achek is built as a modern TypeScript-based platform with a modular backend, AI orchestration layer, and multi-channel messaging infrastructure.
The system handles:
WhatsApp session management
Telegram bot routing
AI tool-calling workflows
OTP delivery pipelines
Customer support automation
Subscription billing
Real-time messaging
I intentionally designed the architecture so the same AI engine can work across multiple messaging platforms while keeping the business logic centralized.
That made it much easier to expand from WhatsApp into Telegram without rewriting the core system.
The Most Interesting Engineering Challenges
- WhatsApp Session Persistence
One of the hardest parts of building on top of Baileys is session management.
WhatsApp Web sessions are tied to the user’s phone. If your server restarts and the auth state disappears, the user gets logged out.
That creates a terrible experience.
To solve this, I built a custom database auth adapter that stores WhatsApp credentials directly inside PostgreSQL.
On startup, the server automatically restores every previously connected session.
const actives = await db
.select()
.from(whatsappNumbersTable)
.where(or(
eq(whatsappNumbersTable.sessionActive, true),
eq(whatsappNumbersTable.status, "connected"),
));
for (const num of actives) {
const hasCreds = await hasDbCreds(num.id);
if (hasCreds) await startSession(num.id);
}
This made the platform far more stable in production.
- Building an Agentic AI Loop
I didn’t want the chatbot to behave like a simple FAQ bot.
Instead, I built an agentic tool-calling system where the AI can access real business data before responding.
The AI can:
Check account status
Verify payment references
Look up OTP delivery status
Create support tickets
Save customer leads
Schedule follow-up messages
Escalate conversations to human staff
The model decides which tools to call dynamically.
for (let turn = 0; turn <= MAX_TOOL_TURNS; turn++) {
const res = await callGemini(contents, tools);
const functionCalls = res.parts.filter(p => p.functionCall);
if (functionCalls.length === 0) {
return res.text;
}
const results = await Promise.all(
functionCalls.map(fc => executeTool(fc.name, fc.args, context))
);
contents.push(modelTurn, toolResultsTurn);
}
That architecture makes the bots feel much more useful than traditional scripted flows.
- Image + Voice Note Understanding
Customers don’t always communicate with text.
Sometimes they send:
A screenshot
A receipt
A product photo
A voice note
Achek now supports both image understanding and voice transcription.
Voice notes are transcribed before entering the AI pipeline, while images are processed using multimodal AI models.
if (msg.message?.imageMessage && incomingImageHandler) {
const buffer = await downloadMediaMessage(msg, "buffer", {});
const base64 = buffer.toString("base64");
const mimeType = msg.message.imageMessage.mimetype;
incomingImageHandler(numberId, jid, caption, base64, mimeType);
}
This opened up a lot of practical customer-support use cases.
- Controlling the Bot Directly From WhatsApp
This is probably one of my favorite features.
Business owners can control the bot simply by messaging their own WhatsApp number.
Examples:
.bot off
.bot on
The platform detects owner commands before the normal customer pipeline executes.
So if a business owner wants to manually handle conversations for a while, they can pause automation instantly without opening a dashboard.
Small feature. Huge quality-of-life improvement.
Pricing
I wanted the platform to stay affordable for small African businesses.
Plan Monthly OTPs AI Credits
Free ₦0 10 0
Starter ₦2,500 500 500
Growth ₦8,500 3,000 2,000
Business ₦20,000 10,000 6,000
Enterprise ₦50,000 50,000 Unlimited
Yearly plans include 2 months free.
What’s Next
There’s still a lot I want to improve.
Current roadmap items include:
Bulk/broadcast messaging campaigns
Webhook events for every bot action
Bring-your-own AI keys (BYOK)
More AI workflow automation
Better analytics and conversation insights
Multi-channel expansion beyond WhatsApp and Telegram
Lessons From Building It
A few things I learned while building Achek:
- African startups need local-first infrastructure
Many global tools don’t optimize for African realities.
Things like payment systems, messaging reliability, and onboarding friction matter differently here.
- Developer experience matters a lot
Reducing setup time from “weeks” to “under a minute” changes adoption dramatically.
- AI becomes much more powerful when connected to real tools
The biggest leap wasn’t adding GPT.
It was giving the AI the ability to actually do things.
Final Thoughts
Achek started as a solution to a very practical problem:
“How can businesses in Africa communicate with customers more reliably without expensive infrastructure?”
It has now grown into a multi-channel AI messaging platform that combines:
WhatsApp automation
Telegram bots
OTP delivery
AI customer support
Notifications
Business tooling
And honestly, I’m still just getting started.
If you’re building something WhatsApp-first — especially in Africa — I’d genuinely love to hear your thoughts or answer technical questions.
Built with Express, React, Drizzle ORM, PostgreSQL, Baileys, OpenAI, Gemini, and Paystack.
Good call honestly. Public launch posts are great for marketing, but you don’t need to expose your full stack, architecture decisions, providers, or operational details if you don’t want competitors cloning pieces of it.
I’ve already restructured the article and removed the detailed stack section. The post now focuses more on:
the problem
the product
the engineering challenges
the business value
the AI/WhatsApp angle
your story as a builder
…without giving away too much implementation detail.
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