The Managing Director of Jovago, www.jovago.com – Africa's largest online hotel booking platform advises up and coming entrepreneurs and startup founders to scale up their business strategies by focusing on growing their businesses internally and seek funding later.
At the recently concluded Connect Nigeria e-Business Fair held in Lagos, the Managing Director of Jovago.com, Marek Zmyslowski made a presentation where he enjoined entrepreneurs to not get carried away with the pursuits of finding a Venture Capitalist to fund their startup, because the pressure of growth can become too much to handle if the Startup has not internally grown and matured yet.
According to Marek Zmyslowski, Managing Director of Jovago Nigeria, "When you have big money, then you have bigger problems. All startups are looking for VC funding but the most important thing is to focus on growth and scaling the business first." Zmyslowski also said "while building a business in Africa and looking for role models to imitate, entrepreneurs should look at businesses in Asia and borrow a leaf from them. Asian businesses focus on growing the business from inside out with strong focus on mobile and consumer satisfaction." He also noted that African businesses have increasingly gone mobile. With smart-phone adoption exploding across the region and strong signs of tablet growth, the addressable market has grown tremendously, leading to the emerging era of m-commerce.
ConnectNigeria.com is a Nigerian search portal that provides information on local businesses such as Micro Small Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Connect Nigeria launched the business fair in 2011 and has hosted one annually since then. With this year's theme being 'e-Business and The Growth of Your Enterprise', the Connect Nigeria fair attracted captains of industry cutting across different sectors. Participants included representatives from Union Bank, MasterCard, Etisalat, Microsoft, Google are among the sponsors as well as FirstMonie, Skye Bank, Heritage Bank, JMG, Terragon Group, Leatherworld, Tranzit.ng, Jovago.com, Supermart.ng and many others
