Beside the road along Adeniyi Jones Ikeja, Lagos, is a blue canopy where multitudes of customers are catered to by a handful of individuals, every weekday morning. At first glance, you’d think that it’s a typical Mama Biliki akara or dundun business. But then you’d be dead wrong because this joint is a snack startup which averages a return of about a million naira monthly.

“This is a snack startup owned by O’Event Concept,“ said the manager, Bashiru Muhammad Babajide.

O’Concept, as it is also called, is a 7-year-old company established by Mariam Olugbemiro without a bank loan or private equity placement. The company has another breakfast outlet within the same area, and its head office is located at Ogba.

The company is one of the 65% of small and medium enterprises in Nigeria managed by sole proprietors. It began as one of the many SMEs that explored personal savings to raise startup funding of less than N10 million.

Within the company’s second and third years of operations, it struggled to keep head above water, and to create a niche for itself, while competitors like 12 Baskets were... https://nairametrics.com/2019/07/16/oconcept-the-qsr-reengineering-snack-on-the-go-to-flip-the-market/