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By Ayo Alonge, [email protected]
Oluwatoyin Alabi-Ayeni, is the Chief Executive of Maragbafin Nigeria Enterprises, a fast growing startup engaged in herbal products and services.
In this interview, she tells the story of her business which enjoys patronage from both local and international markets. She also speaks on challenges and government support for small businesses.
Background
Our company is a herbal treatment and consulting services company with the sole aim of consulting, treating and curing different medical conditions or ailments using herbs, under regulatory and supervised operating environment. At Maragbafin, we have a wide range of herbal products for the numerous medical conditions we cure which is administered after due consultation with patients. I was inspired by the sufferings of less privileged people who could not afford good medical care. I believe that with my knowledge of the medicinal use of herbs, setting up a herbal centre and manufacturing of herbal products to cure and help people will be most beneficial to humanity at large.
Why entrepreneurship?
White collar jobs are limited with highly competitive vacant positions with respect to the population of graduates seeking employment. I wanted a path without limitations and with more creative opportunities. There is a high rate of unemployment across the world which means getting a white collar job was a tall dream. I decided to be an employer of labour as part of my contributions to helping humanity through herbal treatments. Herbal medicine is the future and most sustainable medicare. There has been cases of adulterated medicines or drugs being sold to unsuspecting innocent patients which either kill the patients or deteriorate their medical condition. As a kid, while growing up, my grandmother usually treats us with herbs when we had bad or ill health; hence, my knowledge about use of herbs in treating different medical conditions. With such herbal medicine knowledge combined with my university degree, I felt nothing could be better than starting up my own herbal business thereby making use of my skills and knowledge and education which I had gained over time.
I play a consultative and advisory role. I help in the setting up, planning and organising the business. I also advise based on my current disposition in terms of capital and human resource management of the business.
Business niche
What makes me different is my operating procedures which I never compromised. Also, effective feedbacks procedures on quality of services rendered. I do follow-up calls to check up on all my treated patients to confirm how my treatment has been useful to them and also make sure they adhere strictly to the medical advice I give, to avoid recurrence of their cured ailment or diseases.
Initial capital
I was able to raise capital from personal savings which I had got and saved up over time. I did a few petty businesses and other jobs at some point in time and I saved up most of my earnings derived from the jobs I did.
Challenges and management
There are lots of challenges but lack of sufficient marketing and awareness creation, lack of sufficient funding for growth and development are the major and immediate challenges. I was able to tackle my challenges with the constant use of social and prints media for awareness creation and bank loan facility to shore up my working capital to boost my production and sales.
Customers/clients
My customers are both private and corporate bodies, and mostly private individuals. My customers are also referrals from previous successful treated patients. I am very good in herbal treatments with a proven track record. The following ailments have been successfully treated with testimonials — cervical cancer, breast cancer, cysts, leukemia, stroke, diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis, hepatitis and lots more. These various treatments are successfully carried out under strict supervision and observations while adhering and complying to best regulated herbal practice. Our treatments have been highly effective and beneficial thereby leading to many referrals from cured patients. Patients in diaspora receive consultations and treatments over the phone and social media while their herbal medicines prescription is being delivered to their various countries. There is a database of all our treated patients. The purpose of the database is numerous but mostly to enable us monitor how effective our treatments have been as well as monitoring how our patients adhere strictly to our advice on how to keep themselves healthy to avoid a recurrence of their cured ailments.
Profitability and competitive edge
The business is highly lucrative and profitable. The response from consumers is highly encouraging and the market is very well accommodating and responsive to the product. The competition is fair and highly competitive but the quality of our products and services rendered in terms of consultation and treatments administration gives us an edge in getting a fair share of the market. Our competitive edge is our uncompromised standards; quality of our products and services being rendered especially in the areas of consultation, treatment administration and feedbacks process on treated patients.
Patronage
Patronage has been very exciting for us because the market absorbs all our products and demand for our products increases on daily basis. The level of patronage on herbal treatment is also very good and our clients base has been growing more through referrals. Patronage, in all, has been very good and keeps getting better by the day. I create my market with the use of key distributorship model in major markets, use of social media, prints media and referrals. Awareness created using prints and social media has been the most effective tool of creating our market as it gives us good visibility and accessibility to both local and international customers and patients. Use of independent marketers in organising market storm promotions to interface with end consumers in different market locations. Engagement of trade partners also referred to as key distributors to ensure that our products are physically available to consumers in their various market locations.
Loan acquisition
Yes, I have always considered getting a huge loan to expand the business basically because of high demand for our products and services. My long term plan for the business is to develop the business into a global brand, that will be a household name in herbal medicine consultation and treatments with branches across the world.
SMEs and government support
Government can encourage SMEs simply by providing adequate financial support through the various existing government agencies like the Bank of Industry. Government can also create an enabling competitive environment with favourable policies. Government policies that will make provisions for local banks to have a flexible lending packages to support SMEs. Government policies that will also protect the SMEs by eliminating from the market, adulterated products, substandard and unregistered products in the market with the use of governmental agencies.
