Nigeria: SBC Empowers 80 Entrepreneurs

Seven-Up Bottling Company (SBC), in collaboration with Zenith Bank and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), has organized the inaugural SME Scale-Up Bootcamp to empower 80 small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The bootcamp themed ‘Dream Big, Scale Bigger’ spanned two days, offering a workshop tailored to empower CEOs of rapidly growing SMEs with insights into the complexities of scaling businesses within the Nigerian ecosystem.

Speaking to the participants, Ziad Maalouf, the Managing Director of SBC, underscored the substantial contributions of SMEs to Nigeria’s GDP.

He praised the entrepreneurial spirit of Nigerians and highlighted that the bootcamp was conceived with the goal of empowering more entrepreneurs to successfully scale up their businesses.

“I have lived in Nigeria for 17 years; this scale-up is a way to give back to the economy in a way that has an impact. If we empower all the SMEs present here to scale up and grow to become billion-dollar enterprises, within ten years, they will employ millions of Nigerians, and that way we can say we have paid back,” Maalouf said.

Maalouf, who is also the Chairman of the Food and Beverage Recycling Alliance, outlined ten prerequisites for scaling SMEs.

“Companies that must grow must pay attention to these 10 things: the big idea, passion, cash, value, teamwork, strong business acumen, purpose, network, artificial intelligence and business transformation advice,” he said.