ENTREPRENEURS CHARGED TO SEEK FINANCIAL KNOWLEDGE ON FUNDING, BUSINESS MANAGEMENT
ENTREPRENEURS IN THE COUNTRY have b e e n charged to de-velop the rigour and the essential rudiments needed in seeking for funds to scale their businesses.According to Adolphus Abraham, managing director and chief executive officer of Rigo Microfinance Bank. a lot of entrepreneurs already have the needed passion for their businesses but lack the financial knowledge, orga-nizational ability and the culture of record-keeping in their businesses which have hindered them from assess-ing funds.He said, “Every entrepre-neur that I face daily, they all have challenges.
The first is the depth of financial knowledge- more than half of them lack fi-nancial knowledge, a lot of them have a passion for their business but they don’t know the reason why they should document it, don’t know how much the profit they make until we sit with them to analyze their business with them.“A lot of them don’t know their cash flow until we sit with them to analyze their business with them.
Financial knowledge is key in terms of business and until entrepreneurs develop themselves on their own and are schooled it’ will be diffi-cult for them to access funds from financial institutions”, HE SAID.He noted that a lot of en-trepreneurs were unable to access bank credit to grow their businesses because of improper or lack of record keeping, adding that no bank would lend to a business man who does not keep fi-nancial records.
“A lot of entrepreneurs do not see any reason why they should keep records, so the lack of records makes it dif-ficult for us in the financial institution to assess their ability. So most times, you find out some incomplete records, we have to start helping them to draw their records in other to assist them to know what the size of every business is." He added, “ There is a problem of structure, even though it’s a one-man busi-ness there should be a struc-ture, there should be a clear cut structure where everyone has a role he’s playing in the organization.“Structures clearly define roles and understanding of such structure will tell you either to reduce staff or hire more from the staff strength that you currently have so a lot of entrepreneurs are not aware of the importance of having a structure. “ T h e f a c t t h a t y o u ’ r e the chief executive officer (CEO) doesn’t mean that you should do everything by yourself. If these three things are there, every entrepreneur will not have challenges in assessing funds.”The Enterprise Hubs, ac-cording to Dozie Arinze, head of the organization said that it is a nonstop solution centre for emerging enter-prises that would require business facilities, mentor-ship sessions with business professionals and the legal framework needed to start their businesses. Dozie in a chat with busi-ness a.m. said that entre-preneurs who subscribe to their services would have an opportunity to access world-class business facilities.He said, “We provide so-lutions such as flexible ac-commodation, co-working facilities, entrepreneurship development programmes, free opportunity for their business development, op-portunity for them to market their businesses online on the enterprise hubs platform as well as back end services to support entrepreneurs, legal drafting, corporate logo and website designs and other services.
Dozie added that his or-ganization plans to have twenty hubs spread across the country, Africa, and the middle east for members to have access to both local and international facilities.Entrepreneurs in vari-ous sectors of the economy such as agriculture, I.T and innovations, data science management, Artificial Intel-ligence (AI) Quantum Sci-ence and computerization were given the opportunity to pitch their business ideas for prospective investors.
According to Mike Ade-musuyi, a business farmer who pitched his business said that he has a new way of approaching the banks and what it entails in winning the heart of investors when seeking for funds.