Oluwakemi Ajoke Adelaja

Meet Ajoke

Ajoke is a bundle of energy, a natural leader and woman of heart and passion. Ajoke is a married woman with children who believes that her financial independence is critical to her happiness and also believes that a woman with her own money survives better in a marriage. She submits that her spirituality is a key identifier to who she is.

Ajoke has informal training in hairdressing and doubles up as a micro business owner doing her business from an open space in her house. She is a hairdresser by day – servicing her customers from home or going to their own location. She sells cooked and uncooked indomie noodles in the evening and this she augments with soft drinks and water.

Venturing into food business for her was spotting an opportunity and also a way to increase her income stream. She surmised that her location is quite prime, and while this is advantageous to her night business it is not very much so for her day business.

In the course of the training workshop; Ajoke stated that she has learnt the following:

  1. 1. Learning how to spot opportunities based on people’s needs and wants
  2. 2. Collaborating to increase income stream especially within related skills and competence
  3. 3. Understand basic pricing process and foundational business principles
  4. 4. Learning the difference between profit and revenue
  5. 5. Mastering basic sales strategy for profitability
  6. 6. Identifying bad habits that hinder savings and business growth
  7. 7. Learning common mistakes made by micro enterprises.

Impact of Seed Grant

Ajoke is a beneficiary of the N25,000 grant from Proshare foundation. Based on what she has picked from the training workshop she shared how she used her grant – a pressing need she needed to attend to as it relates to her child, the second portion of the money went into buying new products which are in high demand by her customers, a third portion went into fixing her freezer so she can cool her drinks more.

Right now, she stores her drinks in a third-party fridge where she sometimes has to pay a stipend for that service. This also limits her ability to make more sales as she sometimes only buys already cooled drinks, this means she is also at the mercy of her seller. The fourth portion of her funds went into a regular savings to be able to purchase more items for her night business.

Ajoke’s journey to a thriving business is ongoing.