The Enterprise Development Centre- as part of celebrations commemorating the 60th birthday of iconic academician, Pat Utomi- has rewarded three young entrepreneurs who took part in the Business Plan Competition set up by the organization.

The EDC announced the three frontrunners in the competition at an event themed Youth, Entrepreneurship and Leadership Summit on Tuesday, February 2 at the Lagos Business School, Lekki-Epe Expressway.

At the summit, before the announcement of the eventual winners of the competition, successful Nigerian entrepreneurs took turns to admonish the crowd of youths and discuss what it takes to be an entrepreneur in the set-up of the Nigerian society.

The Founder, Managing Director of Swift Networks, Charles Anudu, Founding partner of Red Media Africa, Debola Williams, Managing Director of Mojek International, Ms Chantelle Abdul and Deji Wright – Founding partner of Transport Services Limited all spoke at the summit interacting with the budding crop of entrepreneurial minds and charged them to go ahead and chase their ideas even when there is limited resources.

While announcing the winners of the Business Plan competition, Joel Isibor, a faculty member of the Enterprise Development Center explained that the judges underwent a rigorous process of examining all the business plans submitted in the competition.

He revealed that over 400 plans were submitted by participants but the panel weaned the winners by focusing on certain key qualities.

He revealed some of the qualities to be the business growth potential of the plan, how scalable and upwardly mobile the plan is as well as market potential of the plan.

Other qualities include the previous experience of the competitor, the employability potential of the business plan, the passion of the competitor, financial viability of the plan and how the business idea would impact in the society positively.

Isibor revealed that after painstaking considerations, Olatunji Ololade of Genesis Biotech, Mene Blessing of  Aleph Tar Limited and Agbo Jocelyn of Diamond Elixir Enterprise emerged as the top three competitors for the grand prize of N1,000,000.

Ololade’s business plan was sales of a new skin product that opens up the pores of the skin while Jocelyn produced low income multi-purpose detergent for consumers in the North who until her revelation only had access to overpriced detergent.

The star of the day who walked away with N1,000,000 courtesy of Fidelity Bank was however Mene Blessing who processed protein cake for feeding of livestock and poultry from sea weed. The highlight of Blessing’s plan is how he successfully turned a challenge of the government into a great opportunity of resources.

The government has been battling with the clogging of the water flow to farmers by enormous sea weeds.

Ololade was awarded a cash prize of N500,000 as second runner up while Joseline received N750,000 as first runner up.

See pictures of the winners below.

Emene Blessing, winner of the grand prize of N1,000,000

Jocelyn Agbo, first runner up

Ololade Olatunji, second runner up

 

Photo credit: Ogunsusi Akinjide