PAC Foundation, the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), arm of Pan-African Capital Holdings has trained young entrepreneurs on financial advisory, creating a market for businesses and finance management.

The three-day training that took place in Lagos had facilitators from digital marketing, and business analysts, among others.

The Group MD/CEO, Pan African Capital Holdings, Chris Oshiafi emphasised the need for young entrepreneurs to be trained at the early stage, stressing that some of them lack mentorship amid challenges facing Small and Medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Nigeria.

According to him, “Today you will find out that a lot of small businesses are not grounded in the idea of finance, managing and creating a market for their business.

“The idea behind PAC Foundation is to give opportunity and train young entrepreneurs on basic concepts needed to start, build up a business, and achieve strong corporate governance.

“The Foundation’s major reason is to catch them young and act a financial advisor when the need arises.”

He noted that the training is the plot step, stressing that the PAC Foundation is aiming to reach out to more young entrepreneurs across the country.

“The truth is that we need more small SMEs for us to get youths out of the street and getting employment,” he said.

He added that “This is one of the ways we can help the economy to be more self-reliant, and self-dependent, create domestic consumption and attract foreign exchange earnings.”

He noted that raising young entrepreneurs is a section that is focused on empowerment.

One of the facilitators, the Chief Operating Officer, Ziza Digital, Agbons Igiewe highlighted that young entrepreneurs in Nigeria are facing challenges such as getting the right customers to actually buy their products due to lack of network, lack of perfect branding that big organizations usually do and marketing of their products and services.

On the way forward, she said, “One of the ways that they can tackle all these is that they need planning to start a business. They also need to take marketing into consideration. So they need to ask themselves, who do I want to reach and my target audience?

“And once they know who the target audience is, then they need to ask themselves how do I reach these people. And then of course, you need to take professionalism into consideration because people who want to buy from you as a young entrepreneur, also want value for their money. So you need to be able to deliver value. Whatever business you’re in, you need to focus on customer service.

“Your customer service has to be excellent. Your turnaround time has to be great. And that’s one of the ways that you can actually beat the bigger organizations because you can actually focus on your turnaround time and then your personal relationship with the customers.”

Commending the organisers, Igiewe said training fresh graduates Wema’s a step in the right direction.

“It means that even before you come out of university, you already know what you want to do since you have the idea how it’s done.

“So it also shortens the turnaround time in terms of your learning curve, because you’ve started learning the business right from school. It gives young entrepreneurs an edge over someone who hasn’t learned right from school at all. It’s a fantastic thing and I hope a lot more organizations will do the same.”

Another facilitator, Co-CEO, Printivo Limited, Temitope Ekundayo said it’s a long journey building a business, urging young entrepreneurs to be prepared for the challenges ahead.

He also called on undergraduates to think of alternatives while in school.

“It’s a very great initiative by PAC Foundation. Young entrepreneurs must be prepared for the challenges ahead. Think about your idea much more critically. Think about how you’re going to grow your business and then your revenue. Think about the model you’re using to make money. Think about your operations to people you will hire, and the customers you want to target. These should be enough to get these young entrepreneurs into market,” he said.