Dauda Oladimeji is the managing director of GSO Facility Management, a technology start-up that provides seamless home and office maintenance and repairs on-demand services.
Dauda, a graduate of Covenant University, was inspired to establish GSO Facility Management owing to his love for being unique and the work environment he found himself.
The young entrepreneur says his passion and love to solve societal problems with technology also inspired him. He established GSO to connect users in need of maintenance services with vetted professional artisans seamlessly.
“Being unique and different are two different things, and these were the motivational factors that led to the establishment of GSO,” he says.
“We realized how much more it cost Nigerians to maintain their properties. Many people complain of incompetent technicians who charge for the same repair multiple times, as they do it poorly the first few times,” he further says.
“And some complain it takes them weeks looking for a trusted professional technician. Seeing these needs not being met, it became our aim to provide Nigerians with quality service that will bring comfort to their homes and offices, and that was why we established GSO Facility Management,” he adds.
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Since starting, the business has continued to grow as it leverages technology to deliver swift services to organizations and individuals.
Today, Dauda and his team have positioned GSO to become Africa’s leading tech-inclined facility management company providing quality service delivery.
Speaking on how the business survived the negative impact of the virus outbreak, the young entrepreneur says despite the decline in on-demand services from organizations, the business was able to survive the difficult moment of the pandemic owing to the increase in its on-demand for home repairs.
“As we all know COVID-19 has limited a lot of business from functioning optimally, we did not let this affect us as a business, our on-demand services still function optimally as the request for on-demand office repairs reduced there was an increase in on-demand home repairs,” he says.
“Our services are available online, both the facility management and chauffeur services are available at your fingertips, from start to finish,” he notes.
He says the business plans to expand its operations across the country in the short run and across the African continent in the long run.
Dauda states that the business is currently helping build capacities of artisans in the industry through partnerships with real estate businesses and technical schools.
“We are currently partnering with several real estate firms who need these services. We also have partnered with a technical school and have plans to provide necessary technical and soft skills training to help build capacity all across various trades.”
In evaluating the Nigerian facility management industry, he says urbanization has been the most propelling factor for its growth.
According to him, the industry is valued at $8million and projected to reach $12 million by 2027 and will continue to gain momentum as tourism, institutional building and hotels expand.
Speaking on some of the major challenges, he notes that it was difficult for the business to break into the Nigerian facility management industry. But since breaking into the industry, it has continued to scale.
“One of the major and obvious challenges we have faced as a company is breaking into the market.”
“The facility business is well saturated, but we are breaking even as a company by being unique, with our on-demand services for both facility management and chauffeur service make us stand out and have given us an edge over other facility management companies.”
Also, he says finding the right technicians is also another major challenge the business is facing. “Having to sieve professional technicians from the bunch of technicians is also a challenge, and the ratio between is alarming.”
He urges the government to provide more vocational and training institutions to bridge the skills gap in the industry.
