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How I Started My Business: Keturah Ovio, Founder Of Qeturah.Com – An Online Marketplace For Quality Made In Nigeria Products

Keturah Ovio is the founder and CEO of Qeturah.com; a curated online marketplace that helps you discover and shop for quality made in Nigeria brands and their products with just a click of a button.

She dabbles into Arts to curate events from time to time. Personally mentored by Sir Richard Branson; Chairman of the Virgin Group in UK, Keturah also received sponsorship to be trained at the Branson Center of Entrepreneurship, Johannesburg South Africa. She loves to  build sustainable products and companies that impact the lives of Nigerians, positively.

In this interview with woman.ng, she tells us how she started her business.

FROM HAVING AN IDEA TO STARTING YOUR BUSINESS, SHARE YOUR JOURNEY WITH US

I have had this business idea for over 5 years now and even though the business was only but a fuzzy idea at the time, I knew it was something I’d pursue that could re-imagine commerce across Africa. After my undergrad, it was either I did my Masters, or took up a job. The scholarship I had hoped for didn’t come through, so, I went job hunting. I decided to pass on a well paying job that was 3mins walk away from my house instead, I took on a job in a different state (1hr travel – taxi, train, bus in that order) at a Japanese tech startup where I was the first employee.

My thoughts was, I had much more to learn first hand from the dynamic trio of directors than any business school could teach me. And I was right. Being the first employee, a lot of information and transparency I got to enjoy and first hand coaching. I made it clear to them I had business ideas I wanted to run in Nigeria someday and was willing to work for them to learn first-hand what it takes to build a successful tech or tech-enabled business. After some 2 years, I decided to try out my business idea whilst still living in Asia but that didn’t fly. You know how, ‘If you want to get something done you need to do it yourself?’ This was my then reality.

I left corporate Asia to explore my options; on one hand, I could move back to Nigeria and give it say 2 years to try out my business idea, or, move to Silicon valley, earn and save more money, experience, and grow my network. I chose the former. What informed my decision was when I got accepted as a pioneer Entrepreneur into the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Program in 2015. I immediately booked my one-way ticket to Nigeria because I thought; if an organization as prestigious as this thought my business idea is feasible, I must be on to something good.

The first six (6) months I spent it fully immersing myself in the training program provided by the Foundation and conducting marketing research to know who my customer really is, what challenges do they face, what mediums have they been using to transact sales, how they would want to improve this, if they would want to sell/buy Nigerian-made products online and what type of products would move the market.

November 2015, I launched my website. 4 months after validating my business concept – March 2016 – I emerged overall winner at the British Council organized Enterprise challenge out of 10,800+ applicants.. You can only imagine the whirlwind of events that occurred thereafter.

culled from woman.ng

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Published

September 26, 2017

Location

Nigeria, Akwa Ibom

Category

Other Services

Views

223

ID

800