bigx: Most Nigerians Have such an evil, backward mindset. Threads like this expose them. No wonder... it's not the leaders

MissMeiya:

No. I don't have time to feel sorry for them. I shake my head and move on. I swear, there needs to be a more intelligent version of Nairaland. Maybe with an entrance exam for registration.

angelo82:
Bravo!Very deep and insightful write up.You have touched so many areas that the so called JIBBS were hiding from prospective investors.Since you have the practical experience in the field of Haulage now,don't you think it will be nice for your company to start taking Trucks from interested people from Nairaland.I will love to go into the business and I mean slowly but I will prefer a very trustworthy company for a start.If you are willing to accept to manage trucks on my behalf you can send me your full contact and I can as well arrange with trustworthy contact in Nigeria to do the follow-up.

Ahuitzotl: Its a free forum and country,you need a big heart and an open mind....

MissMeiya: The only thing that would make me believe in curses is the number of stúpid commenters I see on Nairaland. I refuse to believe such stupidity is natural. Something must have been done to them.

The other day, I watched someone actually thank another poster for sarcastically calling him a genius. I had to explain the concept of sarcasm to him. And he still didn't get it. He said, "Call it what you like!" Then started talking about Jesus, or Noah's ark or something.

ghettodreamz:

Thread softly and do your due diligence first, #1 priority.

MissMeiya:

Tread. Tread softly.

ghettodreamz:

Thank you, autocorrect mistake.

MissMeiya:

Check my profile. I've been on Nairaland for a looong time. Those feelings died a long time ago.

Ahuitzotl: There are close to 170 million people here and not everyone can act,have the same I.Q nor level of street smartness like yourself how much more understand what it means for an expat to dish out golden nuggets of info,info you will be hardpressed to find these days.What is most important is for one to be smart enough to take advantage these kind of info and those kind of 'genius' people for his/her own bizness interest like Dangote..no time...

ghettodreamz:

Tread softly and do your due diligence first, #1 priority.

MissMeiya:

There are A LOT of BRILLIANT Nigerians. Just not on Nairaland. Try LinkedIn and Twitter.

caesaraba:
Honestly, as I read your paragraph about building relationships, I started clapping in front of the PC. I`ve learnt a lot this morning from your post and hope to keep tabs on any further updates you make.

MissMeiya:

There are A LOT of BRILLIANT Nigerians. Just not on Nairaland. Try LinkedIn and Twitter.

I get the reluctance to give advice here. The return on the time invested to type it all out on Nairaland is minimal. Not a lot of intelligent feedback. I started talking about my father and I, and our experience in the palm oil business in one thread, but I stopped after awhile. Nothing gained.

MissMeiya:

I'm not usually a grammar nazi (though I am a grammar nerd). This direction this thread took just put me in a bad mood.

Yet another educational thread dissolved.

ThaiAlNigeria: Greetings Nairalanders,

Looking forward to be a valuable contributor in these forums.

I'm from Bangkok Thailand and our company has been doing business in Nigeria for almost 2 years.

We have a registered company in Nigeria as well as in Bangkok and Dubai.

My elder brother saw an opportunity in Nigeria and made up his mind that Nigeria indeed has a great many opportunities.

Needless to say, actually implementing the idea was not an easy task.

We faced so many great hurdles to make it here that we almost closed down our business at the end of first year for reasons I will further explain soon.

I will separate my post into 2 phases.

1) Our first & second business idea and how that failed (Rice, Clothing and imports)
2) our third business idea and how we made it. (Haulage)

I will start with the first phase

Our first business idea was importing Rice into Nigeria. Seeing that I am from Thailand and Nigerians love Thai rice it sounded like a valid business plan. So we went around Lagos searching for buyers. We came across several powerful women that trades in Rice. We saw these huge warehouses full of rice and many container of rice being offloaded into the warehouses. They were willing and enthusiastic to work with us if we could get them their price. Daily rice prices are fixed. So we made a connection with these powerful women.

Now our next goal was to find the rice at the right prices here in Thailand. But it does not end there. We had to register our rice with Nafdac (Nigerian agency for food and drug). And going to the process of Nafdac is amazingly time consuming and expensive. We hired a lawyer to help us speed the process.

We had also known that the import taxes on rice into Nigeria is 40%. Now here was the issue. We tried finding a source of rice at the right prices here in Thailand but it was not possible. The reason it was not possible was because the import taxes were too high and there was no way we could have made any money selling to the Nigerian Market. We wondered how did other people do it? We investigated. We went to the port and made some connections with some people there and found out that rice importers were not paying import taxes. They were paying money under-table. It is an acceptable practice. But we understood it was against the law and decided to drop the idea of importing rice as wanted to wholly abide by the country laws 100%. We could have made money with the right connections but decided not to go this route.

That is failure of our first business plan.

Our second business plan basically involved importing clothes worth around $2000-$4000. But we failed to sell enough in the market. Due to competition and lack of market research we failed.

After this we decided to try to import various stuff into Nigeria like Air conditioners and electronics. But we realized that the prices the buyers were asking were too low compared to what the factories were selling it for. Plus due to heavy competition, complexity in import/export process and direct easy access to factories itself via alibaba and websites; we as middlemen importers were not needed and even if we were our profit margins would be very little.

So we kissed our import dreams goodbye as well.

Almost 1 year in Nigeria had passed.

If there is one thing we learnt.....doing business in Nigeria was NOT easy.

If you are interested, I will next write the second phase of our story later and tell you how & why we succeeded and the extreme difficulties (To the point where we were about to lose most of our fortunes) we faced before we succeeded in our next venture. (Haulage)

My humblest regards.

Your Friend.

We had also known that the import taxes on rice into Nigeria is 40%.

ThaiAlNigeria: Greetings Nairlalanders,

Hope you are all doing well.

I was quite surprised that this thread got put in the front page. That was indeed not what I expected and I am also grateful for this honour.

My reason for making this post is simple. I want to promote Nigeria to the world as a premiere country to Invest in. When we first started out, we "believed" that we could make it in Nigeria. My elder brother believed it and made me believe it too. But even more important, we believed in our Nigerian Partners/Friends/Family to help us do that and they believed in us too. Which is why I had emphasized the importance of "building relationships"

I'm not exactly sure how should I proceed from here after reading all the comments. But I do have alot in my mind I did like to convey.

I would like to start by saying that I have been using Nairaland for my research and due diligence for more than a year. This website is a valuable source of great information about Nigeria. A recent example of my research using Nairaland was finding out which banks were the best for companies. As eventually we will have to take a loan for rapid expansion in our business and we will do it with the help of Nigerian banks. I am not sure if I should write down the names of the banks I have selected here as it may invite some unforseen comments. But the point I'm trying to make is, I use this medium to give information and to reach out to foreigners and locals to start investing and the great potential for Nigeria.


-------- Nigeria is on its way to the top ---------

Nigeria is a consuming Nation with nearly 170 million people! After the 2008 world economic crisis, people from all over the world are looking for ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENTS as their traditional investments has failed them. The allure of Alternative investments is the higher rate of returns than simply investing in stocks, bonds, mutual funds etc etc which gives out lower returns.

The WORLD has the money. They're holding onto it. They're always looking for opportunities to make good investments. But they have no knowledge and are hesitant to invest in Nigeria. That's why they're rushing off to China and South East Asia to invest in. If they really know about Nigeria as to what we know, they did be investing alot of money in this wonderful Nation.

What we're trying to do is create awareness and build a brand. Thai Alpha Nigeria is here to build trust. We've been through alot. And more hurdles lies ahead. My Managing Director and our brothers/family/partners has been through alot. And we'll continue to deliver through our continued hard work and integrity. Once they (the world) trust and they see our results, they will start doing even more business with the Nigerians in general. We're still small players compared to those really big Nigerian companies. But we've come so far and we're not giving up.

The BIG BOYS know that Nigeria is the next BIG THING. The big boys (the really wealthy) in the western countries know that Nigeria will grow and it will grow at a very rapid pace. And I'm pretty sure they're taking action. I think informed investors around the world will also know the massive opportunities that is in Nigeria but need a way to invest in Nigeria and this is where we did like to help them do so.

These are my personal thoughts above. And because we (our company) believed in everything I had written above, we worked towards it and did our best to see if what we believed is true or not. Obviously its true.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I will write down the critical gaps that exist between Nigeria and the world from my opinion and personal experience.

1) General Lack of Trust - There is some truth to it as the locals themselves do not trust each other. But alot of it is also overhyped. Nigerians are some of the most honest, hard working and dynamic people on the planet. If you’ve made a friend here, you’ve made a friend for life. There are plenty of honest and trustworthy people here looking to promote a generation of high standards of business and trust. We realized that the KEY to building a successful business here is RELATIONSHIPS.

2) General lack of knowledge about Nigeria. – People know very little about Nigeria. They have never been to Nigeria nor do they ever plan to. This lack of knowledge leaves a big gap in grabbing onto the opportunities that others eventually will.

3) High rate of fraud – Yes it is true. There is fraud. But there are frauds everywhere. If you use your common sense, you won’t be making mistakes here or anywhere else.

4) Media Scare – Media overhypes everything. Unfortunately Nigeria constantly gets a bad rep from media especially when it comes to scams. However, this is slowly changing and business channels are now spreading the news about the growing economy and business opportunities in Nigeria.

5) Mediocre Legal System – There is a lot of corruption here. But there is corruption every else. However this does not stops honest hard working people from doing what they have to build business empires based on "trust" and "integrity".

6) Inexperienced Management – Business are unable to grow from a certain point due to lack of management skills. However this is slowly changing, thanks in a large part to forums such as Nairaland for the priceless information here and the internet.

7) Unwillingness of entrepreneurs to live in Nigeria – Let’s face it. You have to be tough and rugged to live in Nigeria. Foreigners may just find Nigeria a tee bit harder to live in.

Unwillingness of entrepreneurs to travel back and forth on a monthly basis. -- Nigeria is pretty far from alot countries. Travelling back and forth is a very tiring endeavor.

9) Underdeveloped infrastructure. – The infrastructure of Nigeria still needs some work. But with proper management and our wonderful team on ground, we make sure that goods and services are delivered regardless of the infrastructure.

Thank you all for your comments and I am humbled by the attention this thread has got. I've read all your comments and I will try my best to answer everyone to the best of my ability. We're here to stay.

In my next post, I will try to further elaborate on why I had believed that Nigeria would be a great place to do business in.

My humblest regards,

Your Friend.

davidif:

Who passes all this pathetic laws in Nigeria in the first place? Na wa o.

MissMeiya:
Nigerians don't like to share helpful information for free.
Let me give you one PERFECT example. Last year or so, there was a glitch on an American airline's website that allowed people to buy tickets to Israel at a ridiculously cheap amount. The Jews called ALLLLL their family and friends and the airline suffered a huge loss. My mother and I joked that if the tickets had been to Nigeria, not one of our family and friends would have said JACK. The airline probably wouldn't have noticed the glitch for months.

Shevychen2: Its a pity we couldn't allow this wonderful human being complete his posts.

Everyone is skeptical because Nigerians are naturally not open to exposing source of income to other people in full unless there is a juicy catch. Yet we should have at least waited till he made a request or asked for money to rip into him.

Reading through his write up it was obvious he was trying to present his business as the right one to deal with if you have trucks.. Absolutely nothing wrong with that even if he is yet to say it himself. It is left to whoever is looking to invest with him to research.

Anyway, those that will learn from this exposé have already copied and saved his post.

Thanks.

edogirl2:

Please Op,

1. how did you go from wanting to import rice, a business that requires hundreds of millions of naira, to wanting to import clothes of "$2000 -
$3,000?

2. I've always understood that only people with a special license (waiver?) from the Federal government could import rice through the ports,
though it is possible that this is no longer the case. If a waiver is required, why did this key requirement not feature in your list of
'challenges'

3. Per 1 above, if you had hundreds of millions of Naira to dabble in rice importation, how come you could not afford more than a couple or so 'used' trucks to start your trucking business and fell into the hands of so-called Jibbs

4. What's in it for you to reveal your 'business secrets' - what exactly is your ultimate goal.

Nigerians are fond of putting and often losing their life savings chasing the latest 'hot' business - so please do our people a favour and address the above questions so people can make clear-headed decisions.

ThaiAlNigeria: Greetings Nairlalanders,

Hope you are all doing well.

I was quite surprised that this thread got put in the front page. That was indeed not what I expected and I am also grateful for this honour.

My reason for making this post is simple. I want to promote Nigeria to the world as a premiere country to Invest in. When we first started out, we "believed" that we could make it in Nigeria. My elder brother believed it and made me believe it too. But even more important, we believed in our Nigerian Partners/Friends/Family to help us do that and they believed in us too. Which is why I had emphasized the importance of "building relationships"

I'm not exactly sure how should I proceed from here after reading all the comments. But I do have alot in my mind I did like to convey.

I would like to start by saying that I have been using Nairaland for my research and due diligence for more than a year. This website is a valuable source of great information about Nigeria. A recent example of my research using Nairaland was finding out which banks were the best for companies. As eventually we will have to take a loan for rapid expansion in our business and we will do it with the help of Nigerian banks. I am not sure if I should write down the names of the banks I have selected here as it may invite some unforseen comments. But the point I'm trying to make is, I use this medium to give information and to reach out to foreigners and locals to start investing and the great potential for Nigeria.


-------- Nigeria is on its way to the top ---------

Nigeria is a consuming Nation with nearly 170 million people! After the 2008 world economic crisis, people from all over the world are looking for ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENTS as their traditional investments has failed them. The allure of Alternative investments is the higher rate of returns than simply investing in stocks, bonds, mutual funds etc etc which gives out lower returns.

The WORLD has the money. They're holding onto it. They're always looking for opportunities to make good investments. But they have no knowledge and are hesitant to invest in Nigeria. That's why they're rushing off to China and South East Asia to invest in. If they really know about Nigeria as to what we know, they did be investing alot of money in this wonderful Nation.

What we're trying to do is create awareness and build a brand. Thai Alpha Nigeria is here to build trust. We've been through alot. And more hurdles lies ahead. My Managing Director and our brothers/family/partners has been through alot. And we'll continue to deliver through our continued hard work and integrity. Once they (the world) trust and they see our results, they will start doing even more business with the Nigerians in general. We're still small players compared to those really big Nigerian companies. But we've come so far and we're not giving up.

The BIG BOYS know that Nigeria is the next BIG THING. The big boys (the really wealthy) in the western countries know that Nigeria will grow and it will grow at a very rapid pace. And I'm pretty sure they're taking action. I think informed investors around the world will also know the massive opportunities that is in Nigeria but need a way to invest in Nigeria and this is where we did like to help them do so.

These are my personal thoughts above. And because we (our company) believed in everything I had written above, we worked towards it and did our best to see if what we believed is true or not. Obviously its true.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I will write down the critical gaps that exist between Nigeria and the world from my opinion and personal experience.

1) General Lack of Trust - There is some truth to it as the locals themselves do not trust each other. But alot of it is also overhyped. Nigerians are some of the most honest, hard working and dynamic people on the planet. If you’ve made a friend here, you’ve made a friend for life. There are plenty of honest and trustworthy people here looking to promote a generation of high standards of business and trust. We realized that the KEY to building a successful business here is RELATIONSHIPS.

2) General lack of knowledge about Nigeria. – People know very little about Nigeria. They have never been to Nigeria nor do they ever plan to. This lack of knowledge leaves a big gap in grabbing onto the opportunities that others eventually will.

3) High rate of fraud – Yes it is true. There is fraud. But there are frauds everywhere. If you use your common sense, you won’t be making mistakes here or anywhere else.

4) Media Scare – Media overhypes everything. Unfortunately Nigeria constantly gets a bad rep from media especially when it comes to scams. However, this is slowly changing and business channels are now spreading the news about the growing economy and business opportunities in Nigeria.

5) Mediocre Legal System – There is a lot of corruption here. But there is corruption every else. However this does not stops honest hard working people from doing what they have to build business empires based on "trust" and "integrity".

6) Inexperienced Management – Business are unable to grow from a certain point due to lack of management skills. However this is slowly changing, thanks in a large part to forums such as Nairaland for the priceless information here and the internet.

7) Unwillingness of entrepreneurs to live in Nigeria – Let’s face it. You have to be tough and rugged to live in Nigeria. Foreigners may just find Nigeria a tee bit harder to live in.

Unwillingness of entrepreneurs to travel back and forth on a monthly basis. -- Nigeria is pretty far from alot countries. Travelling back and forth is a very tiring endeavor.

9) Underdeveloped infrastructure. – The infrastructure of Nigeria still needs some work. But with proper management and our wonderful team on ground, we make sure that goods and services are delivered regardless of the infrastructure.

Thank you all for your comments and I am humbled by the attention this thread has got. I've read all your comments and I will try my best to answer everyone to the best of my ability. We're here to stay.

In my next post, I will try to further elaborate on why I had believed that Nigeria would be a great place to do business in.

My humblest regards,

Your Friend.

MissMeiya:

Note to my followers: I'm being accused of being from Thailand -_-

edogirl2:

Well, above is your exact post Madam.

And why would you be so unnecessarily aggressive if you did not have a stake in the Op's scheme?


Oh, I just saw that you've removed the part of the post where you claimed to be an expat!

Lobatan!

ghettodreamz:

Thank you, autocorrect mistake.