Youth entrepreneurs partner Microsoft to grow start-ups

Two young entrepreneurs – Bosun Tijani and Femi Longe, in 2010 floated a business to provide support to new and existing businesses that want to innovate using technology. Described as a social innovation centre, Co-creation Hub (CcHub) in Yaba, Lagos, apart from providing technology support, provides space, electricity, internet facilities, mentorship, access to partners and funding.

“No matter the field or sector, the businesses we support must have a technology component,” says Tunji Eleso, director, pre-incubation, CcHub. So, entrepreneurs in any field of endeavour such as health, agriculture, marketing, security must utilise technology in all or several aspects of their operations to qualify for support by CcHub.

To stay profitable while providing this social service for businesses, especially start-ups, Eleso says: “We have corporate organisations that pay membership fees such as Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, Google, Techno. CcHub is also an event place, companies or organisations hold events at CcHub and we use social media to attract their target audience. We also run programmes with out partners.”

According to Eleso, the partnership with Microsoft, a very strong strategic partner of CcHub, started when the two organisations hosted a programme tagged ‘Developers Parapo’ in 2011 and and another in 2012.

This led to a full-fledged partnership. This partnership aims to offer increased access to software and skills development opportunities. It is also a means through which innovative start-ups can access capital investment, benefit from international outreach and scale their businesses to the world through Microsoft’s cloud computing solutions.

According to Jean-Phillipe Courtois, Microsoft International president, who has been on a visit to Nigeria, Microsoft keeps exploring new ways of linking the growth of its business with initiatives that accelerate growth for the African continent.

Therefore, as part of this mission, Microsoft works with CcHub to support the start-up community with Microsoft BizSpark memberships and access to business networking and capital investment opportunities. BizSpark is a global programme that helps start-ups grow into successful businesses through software support.

The partnership also entails enabling developers to access the latest events and workshops on Microsoft’s newest development technologies through relevant community events, provide Microsoft devices, including Windows phones and Windows-based tablets, for testing applications and other software developed by the local IT developers and to enable the Nigerian tech-entrepreneurs benefit from the Microsoft 4Afrika Volunteer programme, which entails Microsoft employees worldwide volunteering in Africa as visiting trainers and mentors at CcHUB’s facilities.

“These Microsoft staff work with the businesses we are incubating as volunteers to help develop the business in terms of sales and marketing and training on the newest technologies that are beneficial to the business,” says Eleso. Citing the example of a startup being incubated by CcHub that has received Microsoft support, Eleso explains, “saveandbuy.com is a web platform to help people save money towards what they want to buy. When they go to the platform and see products they want but do not have enough money, with their payment cards they would make down payment on the website. They keep doing this until the money is enough to buy the product. Saveandbuy.com is already working with some shops and would add more shops to increase the choices of consumers.”

In line with all these, Courtois, the Microsoft International president, says Microsoft’s goal is to help Nigerians and indeed Africans release their potential using technology and therefore working to get developers to come up with applications that are relevant for the local market. This expectedly would encourage anyone with a great technological-based idea for a business or an application to turn that idea into a reality which in turn can help their country, or even the continent at large.

To buttress this, while addressing the press weekend in Lagos, Courtois says: “The best asset of Nigeria is people.” Therefore, for the economy to become great, it is absolutely necessary to develop the skills of the people technologically as technology is critical to the future of any country, he adds, saying “we are doubling on our skills investment.”

Microsoft solutions are not just for the enterprise world but for consumers as well, he points out, revealing that Nigeria would stand as a subsidiary of Microsoft starting July 2015, in which Microsoft would be operating a subsidiary from Nigeria to serve all West and Central African countries, as Microsoft would soon complete its acquisition of Nokia worldwide.

By: OLUYINKA ALAWODE