Fate Foundation, a Lagos-based entrepreneurship promotion organisation, has intensified efforts at fostering wealth and job creation. Through its Aspiring Entrepreneur Programmme (AEP), the organisation is horning the entrepreneurial skills of Nigerians to help them turn ideas into successful businesses. DANIEL ESSIET reports.
ate Foundation, a Lagos-based entrepreneurship promotion organisation, is poised to turn the dreams of startup companies and existing entrepreneurs in the Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs’) sector into reality. Already, one of the country’s leading entrepreneurs and thinkers, Sharon Akinroye, is benefiting from the organisation’s capacity building programme.
Sharon is the Founder/Executive Director, Juste Lunch,said the outfit is a professional catering services company. She participated in the 34th class of Fate Foundation’s Aspiring Entrepreneur Programmme (AEP) where she came first in the Business Plan Competition and got free branding from USP Branding.
Juste Lunch, which she founded in 2010 to provide lunch to school children, is now the toast of schools around the country. By attending the Fate Aspiring Entrepreneurs’ Programme, she has been able to refine her business idea and also build a business with the required structures and systems.
Despite not studying food sciences or catering, Sharon, a 1998 graduate of Geograpgy from University of Ilorin, Kwara State, has been able to build a successful business.
She started at age 18 while in her first year in the university. Narating how the journey started, Sharon recalled that her school was on strike and students were compelled to go home. While she was at home doing her routine reading in a bookstore, she said she noticed a lady walked into the shop and bought lots of books.
Being an inquisitive person, she said she inquired from the lady why she bought such large number of books. She said it was then she discovered that the lady was also an undergraduate, and was taking the books to school to sell.
According to Sharon, this discovery was an inspiring and eye opening experience. Thereafter, she used all her pocket money from home to buy books, which she sold to students when her school resumed later that year.
Sharon even went a little further by adding other retail items to the busniess, such as eggs, christmas cards and daily devotional, among others, to students in her school throughout her undergraduate days.
Despite admitting that the experience has been fulfilling and financially rewarding, she said she could not tell her parent about her entrepreneurial adventure because no one in her family had ever ventured into business. So, she wasn’t sure of how they would react.
After graduation, she was posted to Anambra State for the National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) as a teacher in a Federal Government College. While serving, her entreprenurial instinct again opened her eyes to an opportunity to provide school books to students in her school.
Upon the completion of her national youth service, she returned home to continue trading, often visiting Onitsha Market in Anambra State, to buy commodities for sale in Akure, Ondo State.
Sometime in June, 2003, while attending a Parents Teachers’ Association meeting in her child’s school, she got an offer to make and supply school lunch to the pupils. This was where the caterinmg busniess took off.
Sharon said she met a professional cook through the Funmi Iyanda’s programme on National Television Authority (NTA). It was through the professional cook platform she learnt the business of catering. She also got the strength to start a structured business, which was a step ahead of the trading she had been doing.
Within three years, Akinroye expanded her school lunch catering business to two more schools.
However, in 2006, she decided to sell her business to a friend when her family had to relocate to Johannesburg, South Africa where they stayed for four years before returning to Nigeria.
While in Johannesburg, she continued to provide Nigerian meals, especially Ofada rice, as lunch to corporate offices and her Nigerian friends.
According to her, living in South Africa provided her the opportunity to build a strong network of business-minded friends, some of whom later contributed part of the capital she used to expand her business when she returned to Nigeria in 2010.
It was in 2010 Sharon participated in the Fate Foundation’s AEP that gave her the extra mileage. She continued to run her business until 2012 when she had an unfortunate gas accident that kept her in the hospital for about six weeks. This made her unable to proceed to the second stage of the YouWin grant fund that year.
However, shortly after that, a big break came in 2014 when she landed her biggest catering job ever. She has never looked back since then, as the offer continued to open more doors for bigger opportunities. For instance, that year, she led a team of 50 staff to provide catering services to over 2,000 guests at a funeral event in Osun staff.
Again in 2015, the budding entrepreneur participated in the Women Entrepreneurial Leadership (WELA) Programme. On the strength of the programme, she attended the China Europe International Business School in 2016. Through this programme, she got access to a business loan to expand her business and visited China to buy customised catering materials for her business.
Today, Sharon provides school lunch to many schools across Lagos, including Corona Schools. She also operates a restaurant in Lekki, Lagos. With a staff strength of about 10 and over 50 contract staff, her business generates an annual revenue of about N25 million.
However, Sharon is not the only budding entrepreneur benefiting from the foundation’s skills development programme. The Chief Executive, StreSERT Services Limited, Mrs Roselyn Onalaja, is also counting herself lucky to be part of the programme.
StreSERT Services Limited is a human resources consulting firm that specialises in recruitment, outsourcing, training and expatriate management.
Onalaja, a 1986 graduate of Linquistics from University of Benin, is an alumnus of the foundation’s entrepreneurship programme. She attended Fate Foundation’s Emerging Entrepreneurs Programme (EEP) in 2006. This was still in the early days of her business and the programme equipped her with the skills needed to establish and run an organisation efficiently.
The training was strategic for her, as it helped her focus and develop the organisation for improved performance
Since inception, StreSERT has recruited, trained and seconded over 1000 personnel to various client organisations. With about 22 core staff members, the company serves over 30 corporate clients, with annual revenues of N240 million
Onalaja has always had the desire to impact and prepare others for success in whatever fields they chose.
Her prior work experience working with diverse people/teams and also stakeholders also further developed her natural gift and motivated her and her team of co-founders to take a bold step in 2006 to start StreSERT.
The founding team led by Onalaja leveraged on their experience and acquired skills from previously working with consulting firms to build the foundation of the company.
With their personal savings and a loan of about N3 million, they were able to raise fund to start the business. With this initial capital, they were able to take care of some of the startup expenses such as company registration, business plan, business cards as well as a two-year rent for an office space.
With this method of raising capital, Onalaja came to appreciate better the importance of partnership and networking, as these have provided her team with divergence and flexibility of skills, competencies and expertise. These in turn resulted in quick growth, and has helped to expand her business relationships and opportunity for knowledge sharing.
Executive Director, Fate Foundation, Mrs Adenike Adeyemi, said the organisation was determined to help entrepreneurs develop an idea into innovation. She also said the foundation plans to help propel startups into real businesses and also scale it up to create meaningful impacts on society.
She explained that one idea that emerged from the foundation’s recent efforts was the creation of an innovation and entrepreneurship concentration. In addition to training, she said the foundation offers aspiring entrepreneurs access to intelligent peers and mentors, and a risk-free testing ground for their ideas.
