Omojuwa’s BSF grants 35 entrepreneurs N2.7m

Twitter sensation and media entrepreneur, Japheth Omojuwa’s Businesses Support Fund has raised N2.7 million for 35 entrepreneurs in Nigeria and according to beneficiaries; they have started to receive the grants since the weekend.

According to a spokesperson for the initiative, who spoke with Entrepreneurship+ at the weekend, in what started as a personal gesture by Omojuwa to support 10 small business owners with N500,000, the initiative has been scaled up to N2.7 million, in which more than 70 per cent of the winners were women.

The 35 winners are small businesses were among thousands which responded to Omojuwa’s call to apply for funding, announced through his personal Twitter account on December 31, 2016.

Since the call, which stipulated that 10 small business could be helped with N500,000, the initiative, within a week, raised up to N2.7 million, to which 35 small business owners were beneficiaries.

According to the spokesperson, access to funding, being one of the major challenges confronting small business owners in Nigeria, prompted Omojuwa to support small businesses.

With the second batch of the funding slated to come up in mid-2017, a N5 million target, the spokesperson said Omojuwa is confident that more entrepreneurs in the country would have access to funding as “a lot of people have shown interest in donating to the project and some commitments have been made for the next batch in June/July.

“Personally Omojuwa is committed to giving N500,000 every six months to keep the project running. The hope also is that some of the businesses supported now will be able to support others in the nearest future.”

Omojuwa, on his own, said he’s hopeful that the initiative would revolutionise credit access for small businesses in Nigeria.

“If we have enough businesses thriving, there will be less of these. Also he was impressed by the number of young people using Twitter to promote their businesses instead of waiting for government to give them jobs,” Omojuwa said.