February 27, (THEWILL) – Funding is one of the major challenges confronting businesses of all shapes and sizes in Nigeria and across the world. Finance is the lifeblood of every business. Without adequate cash inflow, businesses would not be able to procure raw materials, convert them to finished products, market or distribute the finished products and even pay their employees.
As a result of this, many financial institutions have sprung up to meet the financial needs of businesses. Once dominated by commercial banks, Nigeria’s financial services industry and business funding scene now boast of other institutions such as venture capital firms, private equity firms, fintechs and crowdfunding platforms. This highlights the maturity of the industry in the country and gives entrepreneurs and business managers a variety of funding options for their enterprises.
Despite this development, many businesses, especially startups and SMEs, are still unable to effectively raise capital to remain a going concern – or even take off in the first place. This is partly due to the stringent measures put in place by these fund providers to ensure that their limited capital is made available to organisations and invested in projects that will theoretically guarantee the best returns.
Unfortunately, many organizations, especially SMEs, lack the capacity to scale through these hurdles because of their weak structures and the managerial inexperience of their founders and operators. Listed below are some strategies that early-stage entrepreneurs and business managers can adopt to make their businesses more attractive to financiers.
1. Write down your business plan: The emphasis here is on “write.” It is not enough to have your business plan in your head; you also have to write it down somewhere. As we all know, information stored in memory can become fuzzy over time. Writing it down will prevent this and…
