Have you observed that needs often give birth to business opportunities? If you haven’t it is time to take a look around you. While a lot of people are getting depressed because of the global and local economic crunch, some guys and gals are actually making money from the present situation.
Human beings are quite creative. I’ll share a practical observation that I made with you. I live in the part of a city where the roads are so bad that individuals often prefer to park their private cars and use commercial vehicle (just to save on maintainance cost). As the situation got worse, (the government agencies simply closed their eyes to commuters plight), some smart small scale entrepreneurs started importing motorcycle and were giving them out to jobless young men on hire purchase. That was the begining of okada business in my community.
Those entrepreneur made so much money while the okada business last. Unfortunately, some criminals took advantage of the situation also and started using motorcycles as quick-get-away vehicles for their criminal activities. It became an everyday occurrence to hear story of people being robbed or assaulted by motorcyclist. The complain from the public was so much and the only solution the state government could think of was to ban the use of motorcycle altogether (never mind the fact that it sounds funny that it is now unlawful to use a motorcyle in my neighbourhood).
The ban was a great misfortune to many entrepreneurs and many youth who earned their living via okada business were thrown back into the unemployment club. While some entrepreneurs went home counting their loss, the smart entrepreneurs went home brainstorming on the next opportunity to catch on. For your information, the roads are still as bad as before.
Well, those smart entrepreneurs settled for a new business with TRICYCLES. We call it “KEKE NAPEP” At first, people were reluctant to enter the tricycles (human beings naturally resist changes). Well, it wasn’t long before we were forced to change and embrace keke napep as the best means of moving from one point to another.
The reason being that they are better at navigating the bad road and they also find it easy to pass in-between on-coming and on-going vehicles whenever there is traffic jam. The CAB-DRIVERS in my neighborhood hates those tricycle with passion. As far as they are concern the tricycles are business spoillers. They carry more passengers than the taxi (you may not believe it, but some carry as much as 6passengers beside the driver, that is Naija for you) and also make more trips per day.
Why am I discussing this? Well, I have being facing a lot of challenge with my online businesses. The soucrce of the challenge is just my ISP (Internet Service Provider). My company relies heavily on internet for communication with clients. Unfortunately, after dishing out a whooping sum of $200 per month (thirty thousand Nigerian naira) per month as rental for VSAT internet connectivity, we are stuck with a bad service provider that gives excuse instead of quality service. It is not easy to dump the ISP and go for another because they are still the best available in my neighborhood, and our present subscription covers several months.
So, I’m just praying and looking for an opportunity to get rid of them. When I get the right opportunity (I’m really on the look-out for it), I’m going to start an ISP company to serve my community.
If you’ve been wondering why my posting hasn’t been consistent, now you know. I’m not quitting blogging, I’m just fighting the challenges hindering me from getting online as I want to. However, I’ve been busy exploiting some offline business opportunities too. I do really believe in multiple streams of income, so I have several baskets for my business eggs, not just one. Are there needs around you? Think deep, those needs will birth business opportunities for you. Cheers.