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SMEs urged to use ICT to grow their businesses
Vodafone Uganda CEO, Allan Richardson (L), Country Manager Brighter Monday, Joshua Mugisha (C) and another official at the Vodafone Power Talks Forum
What you need to know:
Small and medium scale enterprises have been advised to leverage the power of ICT to grow their businesses
Small and medium scale enterprises have been advised to leverage the power of ICT to grow their businesses.
Various speakers at the recently concluded Vodafone PowerTalks Forum urged businesses to use the power of online media to grow their businesses.
Nahida Bhegani, the founder and Director of Def.i.ni.tion Africa, is one of the entrepreneurs who has taken advantage of technology particularly the online media to expand her business. At the Vodafone Power Talks Forum Nahida and her business partner Olga Mugyenyi spoke of the importance of ICT in supporting the growth of Small and Medium scale enterprises. Nahida developed Definition’s printing production facility experimenting with fabrics, inks and a variety of printing techniques on textile and paper by sourcing materials locally.
In 2010, along with her business partner, Ms, Mugyenyi, they founded Def.i.ni.tion Africa, a company whose ethos is to produce 100% African made products. The company had has designed Tshirts for leading celebrities including Navio, Lilian Mbabazi, The Mith and Enygma.
Most important, the company has used online media for market research, product testing and development to a great benefit.
According to Nahida, “The internet has been our primary tool to grow our business. We started using facebook at a time when not many of other businesses were using it…so it gave us an opportunity to share our work with a huge audience and it allowed that audience to multiply very fast. We didn’t have to go out there searching for business. It came to us.”
Definition’s flagship store opened in February 2014 and she was awarded the British Council “Young Creative Entrepreneur” in 2014.
A key aspect for businesses is research and according to Olga, social media has been critical in this regard. “Before we go ahead and print hundreds of t-shitrs we upload the artwork and use social media as a research too to figure out whether this resonates well with our clientele or whether we didn’t get it right at that time”, she says.
Today more than ever, small businesses have the opportunity to use the online platforms for recruitment. According to Joshua Mugisha, the Country Manager of Brighter Monday, an online job website it is now possible to source for talent across boarders in less than one day which was difficult ten years ago. “We are able to find the right person by building a database of job seers and keeping content afresh,” he says.
Vodafone Power Talks is an initiative of Vodafone Uganda that brings together individuals, and businesses to share knowledge and experiences on the transformative power of ICTs for real empowerment and growth.
