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Entrepreneur of the week: Folu Ayeni
Mr. Mofoluso Ayeni is the Chairman/CEO of Tantalizers, one of Nigeria’s fastest growing fast food chains.
Ayeni, whose other name is simplicity, said that it was sheer determination that saw the mustard seed planted 12 years ago transformed to over 50 branches nation-wide today.
Like most entrepreneurs today, Ayeni pointed out that initial capital was the most challenging thing while setting up Tantalizer. Even though he has borne several stings from the bees and now savours the delicious honey pot that is the nation’s fast food industry.
He and his wife, Bose, knew the odds were high against them raising the start-up capital of N2.5 million. “It seemed as a wishful thought. Banks laughed at us to scorn when we approached them for bank loan”, he said in an interview.
Explaining how he was able to surmount the ‘lack of fund’ problem, he said 12 years ago when they produced the blueprint for the money-spinning business, they only needed N2.5 million. But banks shut their doors on them save for the then Prudent bank. “But we held on to the dream, today, these same banks spruce up their sweet-talking business executives and send them after Ayeni, offering all kinds of incentives to win him over”, he informed.
The Tantalizer CEO who has always used every opportunity to encourage would be entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs alike to be determined in anything they want to venture into. Though he observed that funding could pose a serious problem but it is not insurmountable.
Ayeni said “raising the start-up capital was just one side of the Tantalizers challenge. In fact, a more daunting obstacle lay in the physical commencement of the enterprise. We later realized that setting up a business in Nigeria was akin to waving the metaphorical red flag to a bull in a bullfight. The only difference is perhaps that the bull is ironically your supposed protector, not your adversary.
“From day one, we were harassed from every where. Federal, state and local government officials. It’s like me against the world. The ‘area boys’ and different community leaders were after us. Everybody wanted settlement. From our first branch in Lagos where area boys accosted us for settlement to the opening of our branches in Port Harcourt, the story was not different, all these were challenges we encountered before getting to where we are toady”, he said.
One would assume that competition would be what this entrepreneur would find as headache going by the numbers of fast food chains that are springing up by the day. Ayeni said “Many people might not know it, but Nigeria’s fast foods industry is rather a curious one. It’s about the only industry that is insulated from the dynamics of free enterprise. That means that there is no cut-throat competition in the fast foods sector.
“The potential of the fast food industry is enormous. We estimate the market to be worth N190 billion. At the moment, what the operators tap from this is less than N50 million. So, there is a great deal of potentials there. A lot of people will still join the market. If we get our acts right, the Macdonald’s of this world will come”.
“When we started Tantalizers, we invested N2.5 million and information at my disposal from our auditors is that our gross profit is about N4 billion for the financial year, but how much did we invest in the business when we started?
It is usual for SMEs to blame the infrastructure, the lack of knowledge on feasibility study, the banks and a host of other things considered to be limitations. But the word is determination.
“I have seen a lot of Small and Medium Scale Entrepreneurs, SMEs, go down with wonderful ideas, just because of the short sight limitations. Limitations of finance, collateral etc. and what I want to tell such people is that: You don’t win a lottery by wishing, you win lottery by first buying the ticket, like every other person that is expecting a win. You might or might not win but the first step is to buy the ticket”.
Tantalizer can be said to be a success story going by the number of branches it can boast nationwide. There is no major city in the country that does not have a least a branch of this fast food chain and the annual turn over and gross profit of the company is said to have doubled over the years.
Ayeni who hail from Ibadan, Oyo state, graduated from University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 1975 with a first class honours degree in Psychology and joined Centre for Management Development as a Management Research Assistant in 1976. In 1979, he obtained an MBA from McGill University, Montreal, Canada. In 1980, he joined Lever Brothers Nigeria Limited (now Unilever) as Brand Manager in-training. He left the company as a Product Group Manager for appointment in Xerox Nigeria Limited as Business Strategy Manager in 1986 where he worked with his wife before establishing Tantalizer.
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