PHOTO: PIXABAY
Nigeria has gained so much tech investment shows exactly how the digital sphere is growing. Greater infrastructure in terms of broadband and internet access, as well as the rise in digital in general, is aiding the tech revolution that is sweeping the nation.
So, it’s the perfect time to get into the tech business and attempt to take advantage of the benefits the sector is seeing. But how can you create a business plan that focuses on the future of tech in Nigeria?
Isolate a Thriving Sector and Think Globally
A successful business plan factors in the immediate future of the next several months while also looking at long-term scalability. If a business doesn’t continually grow, then it loses momentum and eventually begins to see a decline. Some sectors are up and coming, so writing a plan for them would entail factoring in expansion on a large scale.
For example, the fintech sector is making waves across the entire planet at the moment, providing innovative new ways of doing things and streamlining processes irrevocably.
PiggyVest (formerly Piggybank) accrued $1.2 million of start-up funding in its savings and financial information company that specifically targeted millennials. Already having gained 195,000 users, they now have huge aspirations for the company, planning to roll it out across Africa and then eventually the world.
Similarly, Paystack offers an alternative to current payment options and currently processes 15% of the country’s payments. With 10,000s of businesses on their roster already, the company has been factoring in its scaling upwards.
Businesses that are planning to scale upwards should constantly be reviewing their business plan. If something isn’t working, they should be fixing it. Remember that a business plan can change and doesn’t have to remain static, especially in an ever-changing digital world.
For Your USP, Find Solutions to Common Problems
Another key aspect of writing a business plan is to ensure that you are unique in what you do and not easily replicated. Nigeria’s agriculture is one of the largest providers of our GDP, so the industry is incredibly important for those who might be looking at finding modern solutions to ongoing issues.
The case of Thrive Agric is interesting, as they have managed to combine crowdfunding with the agriculture sector. Indeed, to date, they have supported around 4,000 farmers with crowdsourcing investment and also helped to find buyers and improve practices. This small-scale improvement can benefit the agriculture sector greatly in the long term, and the crowdfunding aspect is an original idea.
A business plan helps test the feasibility of your idea and how well you’d do with your USP (unique selling point). After all, Thrive Agric also needed to ensure their idea worked, especially given how innovative it was.
PHOTO: PIXABAY
Business plans are also useful because they enable you to study the environment in which your business will thrive (sector, competitors) and how you will rise to meet the challenges. Indeed, contextually analysing what could affect your business from the outside while also plotting how you will overcome internal issues is necessary.
By doing this, you can create a roadmap for your business that helps mitigate any issues before they arise. You are also testing for how your strengths and weaknesses match up against the external factors of the economy, technological advancements, the environment, and social issues.
For instance, LifeBank, a tech start-up in the healthcare sector, works to facilitate oxygen supplies to hospitals. In their business plan, they would have needed to analyse the healthcare sector in order to isolate how exactly they would be able to make a difference. A key part of the business plan is proving the viability of the business.
Business plans can help consolidate a lot of the ideas you have about your business to help them become fully actualized. For instance, they can help you understand the business environment by analysing your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, as well as your own.
A business plan can help you fully formulate how you’re going to make an innovative and original idea work through costings and by forcing you to plan ahead.
Business plans can also help you see where you might end up in the next five or so years and answer the question of scalability early on. For all emerging tech start-ups in Nigeria, a business plan is crucial to ensure that you are doing the right things at the right time and at the right rate.
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