Challenges startup owners and entrepreneurs in Nigeria face

Challanges startup owners and entrepreneurs in Nigeria face

Entrepreneurship is the talk of the town at the moment. People resign from their working places, sell their valuables, borrow money or do any other thing possible just to be able to start up something or to be called entrepreneur or because of a striking idea which you think will break into the markets. These things are mostly done by the youths who with a very high hunger to succeed.

But with whom much is given much is required especially in an environment where structures and the environment is working against you.

Before you quit your 9–5 job, before you go for that loan please make sure you have a plan B.

There are so many forces working against entrepreneurs you need to know.

1. Inadequate Capital: People do not know that the capital needed to start up some business is not just the amount you need to pay rent and buy goods then hoping peoples comes to buy what they are selling. There are day to day expenses especially if you employ someone because you have to pay them their salary whether you sell or not, you will need a power supply to work, pay other necessary bills. If you do not have enough capital this will weigh you down and will finally lead to the closure of the business.
2. Inability to get investors: There are businesses that require investment. Business like Tech company where you develop an application and hoping someone will come around and invest. So many Nigerians do not believe in such investments and Europeans may be because of one issue or the other will find it hard to invest too.
3. Security Issues: On so many occasions young entrepreneurs have been left frustrated because their products, goods, or machines have been stolen and they cannot afford to buy the said device again.
4. Poor Power Supply: Nigerian power supply is nothing to write about. If you are planning on doing a business or rendering services that require Power supply then you need to make an extra plan for generator and petrol daily for the generator.
5. Unfavorable Government Policies: The policies that the government put in place are not the ones that will help small-scale businesses grow. They encourage monopoly, put an unnecessary tax on businesses they do not even know how much the business is making. for example, when I opened an office with a friend the first five people that came into our office were for different government money or the other. Here a government can implement a structure that automatically make one person the owner of the business which is very bad for competition.
6. Choice Of Business: Nigeria is different from another part of the world. Example production in Africa now is at a very low rate simply because there are no too many technical know how to handle the production. And in the production industry the more you manufacture the more you sell. So what we do mostly is Buying and selling, ICT, Agriculture.
7. Failure to plan: In Nigeria for you to do business you need to have plans A, B, C, and if possible D. Because you do not know what will happen at any moment. For example “Arm robbers came to my Tech space one day and stole all computers and Generators I have there” Now because I do not have another plan for this I became so frustrated that I have to go and get 9 to 5 job. Thank God for my programming skills. It is easy to say things will go well but it's not easy for it to go well. Especially if you do not have an already established client at hand.
8. Public Relation and Packaging: There is a trend on how you package your products and how you market them. A lot of Businesses now spend more resources in packaging and marketing the product than the number of resources they spent on the product its self. This when people use the product the first time they won’t come back. So they have lost that customer forever and some of these startups do not know the implication of this issue. Because they have also lost the friends and relations of that customer.