9mobile launches mentorship programme for entrepreneurs, SMEs

9mobile has launched the first edition of its mentorship programme, ‘The Hack’, for young entrepreneurs and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Nigeria.

The Director, Marketing Communications, 9mobile, Saidat Lawal-Mohammed, said at the official launch of the initiative in Lagos last week, that it was targeted at SMEs and entrepreneurs.

Lawal-Mohammed said that ‘The Hack’ was targeted at SMEs and entrepreneurs desirous of scaling their businesses and looking for support to grow.

She said that The Hack was one of the 9mobile interventions in developing the SME space by empowering entrepreneurs with knowledge and skills.

“We have partnered with TriciaBiz, a business consulting firm and other experts, to give value to small business owners by teaching them attractive ways of improving their businesses.

“At 9mobile, our belief is that SMEs have a great way of adding to the growth of our economy and the Gross Domestic Product, the more SMEs we can improve in Nigeria, the bigger our economy becomes.

“The expectation of 9mobile was that the participants, through this Hack would jumpstart their businesses with skills gained in the mentorship sessions,” she said.

She added that 9mobile would expand the mentorship programme to other states in Nigeria.

Lawal-Mohammed said that the company would scale up ‘the Hack’ and leverage technology to ensure many people benefit from the initiative.

Also speaking, Mr Karn Gulati, Director of Strategy, 9mobile, said that technology remained a strategic enabler for startups in achieving desired goals.

“Successful startups in the current ecosystem must understand available technology in the market and be ready to use available free project management tools.

“They need to rely on data-driven decision-making (DDDM) through analytics and digital programming and not relying on their intuitions,” he said.

In her presentation, Tricia Ikponmwonba, the Lead Strategist at TriciaBiz, a business consulting firm, taught participants how to improve their market penetration, market development, products development, sales channel optimisation and promotion, among others.

She added that they could improve their products by developing different quality levels of their products, adding new features to existing products and by looking across complementary product offerings.