A peep into Vivian’s smoothie-making outfit
Vivian Offodile is the founder and executive director of D’voc Enterprise. Her firm is focused on healthy living using fresh agricultural products.
Vivian, a graduate of the University of Benin, started her journey as an entrepreneur in September 2016, when she was seeking ways to reduce her body size, which was above the normal average weight recommended for people within her age group.
To achieve this, she began her research on the most conventional way to achieve results without any medical side effects. She discovered that the combination of fresh fruits and vegetables was an effective remedy for weight loss.
In her words, “I realised that blending fruits and vegetables together could turn out to be a weight loss meal for the body: Yes a meal. A glass of ‘smoothie’ for breakfast is a good energy booster for the day with the right blends.”
To help other people with same issues, she established D’voc Enterprise last year January.
Vivian started her business with N80, 000 which she spent on buying a ‘smoothie maker’, customised bottles and start-up fruits. She tells Start-Up Digest that she has grown her business in a way that there’s a growing interest among Nigerians in her outfit.
Vivian has never taken any loan since starting because she believes that there are better ways of sourcing funds for business expansion other than loans.
She states that the fruit juice industry is very crucial in government’s quest to address post-harvest losses in the agricultural sector.
When asked about the challenges she has faced since starting, Vivian tells Start-up Digest that her biggest challenge is poor power supply. According to her, epileptic power supply in the country has not only increased her production cost but has also limited her business from growing very fast.
“I need power supply to refrigerate the fruits and meals for my clients. This means that I would need to fuel the generator set at the rate N145 per litre when there is no power supply,” she says.
“Most of the fruits we have here are seasonal and often times imported. Due to exchange rate fluctuations, they are very expensive and rare to find,” she adds.
To address the issue of irregular supply of fresh fruits all year round, Vivian urges the government to provide irrigation facilities for farmers to crop each fruits all year round. She believes this will make Nigeria self-sufficient, rather than depend on imported fruits from Benin Republic and other West African nations.
She also urges the government to invest in other sources of power to improve the current power generation in the country and also address the biggest challenge killing most businesses in the country.
When asked how she has been surviving recession, Vivian says, “It’s been a very hard one because our customers want the prices to be stable, which we cannot guarantee, as prices of raw materials are on the increase. We need to remain in business so we have learnt to be professionally flexible while sustaining our business and quality.”
Josephine Okojie