Seyi Tinubu, the eldest son of APC National Leader Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, was present at a recent SME summit where he supported up to six small businesses with millions of naira to scale up their businesses and expand operations.
The businessman and renowned philanthropist was hosted as a panelist in the Lagos Small Business Summit hosted by SME100Africa, an African SME community that was established to empower young entrepreneurs and offer them access to finance and entrepreneurial skills.
Interestingly, the program was initially designed to finance a single business with the sum of a million naira. However, Seyi Tinubu deemed it fit to provide five other businesses with the sum of 500,000 naira each, totaling a whopping sum of 2.5 million naira. In addition to that, he also extended a hand of partnership to a guest at the event in a proposed collaboration that will augment his firm’s cooperate social responsibility. The initiative would be targeted at funding the legal processes required to liberate wrongly convicted inmates from different prisons across Nigeria.
“I am always looking for ways to give back to society.” He said as he made these financial commitments.
The overall winner of the pitching competition was Damilola Soyombo, CEO of Skooqs, an ed-tech startup that focuses on providing children access to technology and creative skill courses. She told The Journal that the funding will be used to grow the course content and the user base of the fast-growing startup. Sharing her entrepreneurial story, she highlighted the need for entrepreneurs to always solve problems and improve on their solutions.
“Once you find a problem, start with it. If you feel like the initial problem is not working, you can pivot.”
The vibrant entrepreneur was also awarded a scholarship into Lift, a business training program that equips early-stage businesses for business growth.
Other panelists who were present at the business pitch session include Fade Ogunro, CEO, Bookings Africa; Sade Michael, Founder, Quicklaw; and Oby Ugboma, Risk Compliance Staff, Rising Tide VC.
The convener of the event and Executive Director, SME100Africa, Charles Odii spoke highly of the quality of businesses that participated in the pitching round. He also disclosed that another edition of the SME event will hold in November 2022. He added that the team has in the six years of organizing this program recorded noteworthy milestones that strike a chord of impact in the heart of youth entrepreneurs in Africa.
