Coinkwara Entrepreneur of the month_Asmau of Ayat Ponmo

"My name is Hanafi Asmau Temim and the name of my product is Ayat Dried Ponmo"

#COINKWARA ENTREPRENEUR OF THE MONTH_JUNE

One of the cardinal developmental parts of the CoinKwara Programme is to pick our ‘Entrepreneur of the Month’ and hold an exclusive interview with him or her. This interview gives opportunity to the particular entrepreneur being chosen to evaluate him or herself and assess the growth of his/her company. We also believe that this kind of interview will educate and motivate fellow entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs.

For the month of June, our Entrepreneur of the Month was Mrs. Hanafi Asmau Temim. Asmau’s company, ‘Ayat Dried Ponmo’ is the leader of the Ponmo Industry. Adding innovation into the Industry, her ponmo is very neat and well packaged to meet consumption standard of all types of consumers.   Her office is located at: Water View Estate, Off Pipeline Road, Ilorin, Kwara State. You can contact her company on 08114551731 or 08035225727, or join the brand community (Ponmo Lovers) on https://www.facebook.com/groups/135635736973385/.

THE INTERVIEW

INTERVIEWER:  CAN YOU TELL US YOUR NAME AND WHAT YOU PRODUCE?

ASMAU:               My name is Hanafi Asmau Temim and the name of my product is Ayat Dried

                              Ponmo.

INTERVIEWER:  WHAT IS YOUR LEVEL OF EDUCATION?

ASMAU:               I have a B.Sc. in Hospitality, Tourism and Event Management from Kwara State 

                              University, Malete.

INTERVIEWER :                 ARE YOU MARRIED?

ASMAU:                               I’m married with one kid

INTERVIEWER:                  CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT YOU PRODUCT?

ASMAU:                    What we do is that we produce and package dried ponmo in a hygienic way.

                                   We have different sizes and prices. The highest price we have is N1, 000. 

                                   We have N500 and N250. We are also introducing the student package which 

                                    goes for N150.

INTERVIEWER:                  WHEN DID YOU START THIS BUSINESS?

ASMAU:                               We started about three months ago. That should be around April. 

                                               9^th of  April was the actual first production date.

INTERVIEWER:                  WHAT MADE YOU DECIDE TO TAKE THIS PONMO AS A

                                                 BUSINESS?

ASMAU:               When we were in Abuja. Me and my husband. We used to buy this dried ponmo 

                               and we soak it any time we want to eat and he (my husband) really likes it. He 

                               loves eating ponmo. There was a day he came home and he said that he met one of your volunteers (in Coin Consults), one of you. He said the person deals with selling Cow skin. He now said it would be a nice idea if we could be doing something like this,  that will be better than what we used to buy. That will be in a packaged form and more clean and neater than what we used to see in the market. That was how we started.

INTERVIEWR:                     Is that what motivated you to start this business exactly?

ASMAU:                               Yes, that was what motivated me

INTERVIEWER :                 You started just to please your husband?

ASMAU:                               (laughing...) Not to please him

INTERVIEWER:                  I HAVE BEEN SEEING AYAT PONOMO EVERYWHERE,

                                                WHAT’S THE SECRET BEHIND THIS NAME?

ASMAU:                        Ayat is the short form of, ‘Ayatullah’ and that’s the name of my son, of our 

                                        son, sorry. Yes, Ayat-(means) Sign.

INTERVIEWER:                  HOW MUCH DID YOU START THIS BUSINESS WITH?

ASMAU:                               Almost N60, 000.

INTERVIEWER:                  IS THAT NOT TOO SMALL TO START A BUSINESS?

ASMAU:                               It’s not too small ooo. You can even start a business with as low as 

                                               N15, 000 depending on what you want to do.

INTERVIEWER:                  SO HOW HAS THE BUSINESS BEEN DOING? HAVE YOU  

                                                 BEEN MAKING SALES? 

ASMAU:                               We thank God, we are moving forward. We are making sales. We have 

                                               customer in Nasarawa, prospective customers in Abuja also. We have different places in Ilorin where they buy. KWRS, we have customers there. We have customers in Uniloin, we have in (Kwara State) specialist hospital and we have in Kwara Poly. And we still have some other petty demand, those are the place we have huge demand. The demand we have now is even higher than the supply.

INTERVIEWER:                  CAN YOU MEET CUSTOMER REQUEST WITHOUT 

                                                 DISSAPOINTING?

ASMAU:                               Yes we will. We don’t disappoint our customers even if is to stay all 

                                               night without sleeping.

INTERVIEWER:  That means your customer have priority over your satisfaction?

 ASMAU:              Yes

INTERVIEWER:                  WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR YOUNG 

                                                 ENTREPRENEURS OUT THERE?

ASMAU:                               Hmm. What I will say is that there are many opportunities outside, one has to just explore these opportunities. We should not look at some businesses as if they are dirty jobs or this is a dirty job or local business, “I can’t do it”. There are some people that will make jest of you because you are doing ponmo but you don’t need to mind, just focus on what you do. Once you focus you’ll make it.

INTERVIEWER:                  THANK YOU MRS. HANAFI. HOW LONG CAN THIS PONMO

                                                 LAST?

ASMAU:                               It can last for as long as 6 Months and even more than that.

INTERVIEWER:                  ARE YOU USING ANY FORM OF PRESERVATIVE?

ASMAU:                               It’s just natural form of preservation.

INTERVIEWER:                  WHAT CHALLENGES ARE YOU FACING AS AN ENTREPRENEUR?

ASMAU:                            We face a lot of challenges but to mention few, the first is to enter 

                                           market. You know packaging of ponmo is a new thing, it’s not  like biscuit

                                          or cream you know you will see in packaged form in the supermarket or shop. So to get people that will accept packaged ponmo is not easy, you have to persuade them. Most of them even believe that the one in the market is (more) cheaper than this one. Like if they buy this, it’s just like they are wasting their money, so we had to persuade them.

{INTERVIEWER: So, have you been able to persuade them to buy the product?} Yes

Another challenge we have is debt, credit sales. Most of the people in Ilorin don’t buy in cash. Most of them will tell you (onise osu niwa o, o die yin osu ki e to ri owo gba) we are salary earners, you can only get your money at the month end.

 {Is that not affecting your business?}

 Of course it will, because this is a business where by you still need money to produce another one once you sell out.

INTERVIEWER:                  WHAT DO YOU SEE ABOUT COINKWARA PROGRAMME?

ASMAU:                               Coinkwara programme is a nice programme that promotes both old and new entrepreneurs. At least I attended the two previous BSS (Business Strategy Session) and I learnt a lot from the programme. It’s a nice programme. You guys should keep it up.

COIN CONSULTS’ TEAM

Akata Olanrewaju Arafat

Thomas Kephas

Hanafi Olanrewaju Rabiu (Team Leader)