Halima Adeniji is the chief executive officer of ‘Cakes on Point’. The firm offers outdoor and indoor baking services in Lagos and its environs.
The success of her mother, who is also a baker, inspired Halima to set up this business in 2015. Halima learnt baking when she was 13. Apart from her mother being a baker, Halima was inspired to establish this business owing to her passion for baking, which prompted her to pick up a job at a cake company immediately after her tertiary education.
She was able to raise her initial start-up capital from personal savings she made while working in a cake company.
Halima says she got her inspiration from the mother. “She knows how to bake and also sells baking items. When I was young, each time I went to her shop, all I wanted to do was to look at cake catalogues and imagine how each cake would be,” she explains.
“I started my business really small. I worked for a cake company before I decided to start my own business. Every month, after I collected my salary, I saved half of it to buy one or more baking equipment. Gradually, I was able to start my owing baking business,” she says.
The Computer Science graduate tells Start-Up Digest that her business has grown since starting and has continued to remain in existence owing to the excellent services she renders to her clients who in turn recommend others for her.
“I ensure that I satisfy my customers so that they can always come back and also refer me to others,” the baker says.
The young entrepreneur believes that she sources her raw materials from local markets across the country. This, according to her, is the way to go in Nigeria where manufacturers source the majority of their raw materials from abroad.
When asked about the challenges confronting her business, Halima tells Start-up Digest that lack of finance is the greatest challenge her business faces. According to her, lack of funding forced her to set up this business early enough, as she was unable to secure enough funds for business registration as well as financing the business proper.
She urges the federal government to provide adequate grants and loan opportunities to youths with entrepreneurship minds, stating that a lot of young people with wonderful business ideas are yet to go commercial owing to inadequate funds to finance their businesses.
Apart from finance, Halima says that high cost of food items and inadequate power supply are key challenges confronting her business. She states that adequate power supply is the backbone of any economy, calling the government to ensure adequate supply of power for start-ups and businesses to survive.
She further says that it will be impossible for start-ups and MSMEs to realise their potential in the absence of power.
What advice does she have for other entrepreneurs? Halima says, “There are going to be hard times, but never give up, dream big, aim high, pray very hard, work hard and success is yours.”
