The Interview Magazine
Temitope Ogunmeso: Bringing solutions with IT
Temitope Ogunmeso is the founder of Krystal Digital, an IT company that specialises in the creation and development of educational software.
Inspired by the “frustrating” experience he had in an attempt to secure his secondary school transcript, Ogunmeso founded MySkool Portal, a School Information Management System designed for proper documentation, storage and easy retrieval of academic records, in 2010.
Today, MySkool Portal is a success story and a major disruption in how secondary schools do proper documentation, storage and retrieval of data. Now adopted by more than 50 federal government-owned secondary schools in Nigeria, MySkool Portal has more than 65,000 active student users.
Listed in Forbes’ “30 Most Promising Young Entrepreneurs In Africa 2018”, Ogunmeso’s Krystal Digital products and services currently span across 48 per cent of the federal government colleges in Nigeria.
Krystal Digital has over 150 employees and its annual revenue is estimated to be around $3 million.
Kasope Ladipo-Ajai: The authentic omo alata
We see people hawk pepper every day in Nigeria. However, Kasope Ladipo-Ajai, a smart out-the-box thinking computer scientist has brought creativity to how pepper business is done in Nigeria.
Her brand, OmoAlata – a colloquial name for pepper sellers in the Yoruba parlance – surely projects pepper selling as a good business, inspiring others to see its potential.
It was in 2012, when tired of the 8-6 routine life of an average employee, that Kasope ventured into entrepreneurship, launching OmoAlata, a Nigerian food service and packaging company with focus on providing easy to use pepper mix for the public, with her savings.
With online researches and advice from caterers, Kasope found out a perfect mix of her product. Producing in little quantity and giving them out to family and friends, she was able to test its acceptance.
In 2015, Kasope’s OmoAlata was listed among five Nigerians on Forbes young entrepreneurs. She also won the 2015 She Leads Africa Pitch Competition and got a $10,000 cash prize.
Michelle Ekure: The Shoes entrepreneur
Michelle Ekure is one of the few young Nigerians who have taken their destinies in their hands.
A graduate of International Studies and Diplomacy, Ekure has continued to thrive as a cobbler, inspiring young Nigerians to be enterprising and consequently less dependent on white-collar job.
Ekure didn’t set out to be a cobbler. However, waiting for six years after graduation without a job led her to start buying and reselling shoes. Her curiosity to know how shoes are made drove her to acquire shoemaking skills.
Today, she owns and run her own small shoemaking company that produces up to 50 shoes weekly and has about six apprentice learning shoemaking under her tutelage, impacting and empowering others to with shoemaking skills.
