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However, exceptions to this rule exist. There are a number of decent businesses you can kick-start with ₦500,000 or lower. We’re talking businesses that have the capacity to yield much higher than average Return on Investments. Let’s take a look at 10 of such businesses.
E-commerce
Within the last decade, Nigerians have embraced e-commerce—which takes the buying and selling of products online. Some of the biggest players in this space rake in tens of millions of naira every month. But the good news is that you don’t have to be a Jumia or Konga to earn good income from this business. All you need to do is build an online store that guarantees a great user experience, has good product pictures, and is stocked with items that are in high demand. Market your platform and its offerings, and watch customers flock to your site.Online Food Delivery
People aren’t just buying phones and clothes from online channels. They are also ordering their food off the web. Their desire for convenience has caused the emergence of platforms which attend to buyers; culinary needs, and have their preferred dishes delivered to them, wherever they are. You can certainly make a lot of money running this business, whether in conjunction with existing restaurants or out of your own kitchen.Small-Scale Logistics
The first two ideas we’ve talked about depend to a great extent on logistics and delivery agents to ship their products to the customers who have ordered them. You can make a fair deal of money by running a small-scale logistics operation. All you’ll need to begin is a motorbike and a rider (assuming you aren’t riding the bike yourself). As your business grows, you can expand your fleet of motorbikes and hire more riders.Cocoa Business
There isn’t much of a buzz around this business, but it’s one that yields pretty good ROI, especially if you begin with a healthy sum of money. The great thing is, ₦500,000 is more than enough to start. You should aim to be a middleman—one who buys bags of cocoa seeds from farmers at inexpensive prices and sells them at significantly marked-up prices to exporters.Sign up for the Connect Nigeria daily newsletter
Agro Store
Farmers need things like fertilizers, animal feed, seeds, and implements. With less than ₦500,000, you can set up a store that supplies them with these things. Of course, we’re assuming that the rent for your store is on the low side—and it will almost certainly be if you’re running your business close to rural farms, which is the ideal kind of place to situate it in. You can make a lot of money from this.Dropshipping
Dropshipping is a business model that has been greatly enabled (if not just made possible) by the internet. It involves listing products from a wholesaler as being for sale on your own web store; when buyers order it, you simply forward the order to the wholesaler and have the product delivered to the customer. Meanwhile, you’ll make a profit off of the transaction. It’ll cost you less than ₦500,000 to start up a dropshipping business that’s big enough to consistently turn in a decent profit.Web Design Agency
The web has become a fixed part of the lives of millions of Nigerians. We do a lot on it: communicate with one another, entertain ourselves, buy and sell, and learn. Web designers play a big role in bringing the websites that populate the internet to life. The demand for web designers who can create nice web pages continues to rise, so there’s plenty of work—and pay –for anyone who’s really skilled at this. You can start out with way less than ₦500,000.Digital Marketing
Here’s another business that’s basically focused on making the digital space work for people and organizations. Digital marketing involves planning and executing marketing campaigns across digital channels—blogs, emails, social media, etc. If you’re steeped in the ins and outs of the online world, skilled at creating content that converts, and able to track and analyze performance metrics for various web and social media platforms, this is a business you should definitely have a go at.Event Planning
You don’t need huge sums of money to begin an event planning business. What you do need is a love for organizing things and the energy to put a brilliant, memorable event together. There are significant occasions taking place all the time, everywhere in Nigeria—weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, corporate events, etc.—and the planning of these is outsourced to capable managers. You could make hundreds of thousands of naira from a single assignment.Register to attend the CN Business Mixer
Mini-Importation
It usually costs millions of naira to start a medium or large-scale importation business. But with just ₦500,000 (or less), you can begin importing goods that are in high demand—such as fairly used phones and other electronic gadgets and accessories –and sell them to local buyers for a profit. Often, all you need to do is order items from a wholesale platform domiciled abroad (China, for example), and have them shipped to Nigeria.Final Words
Despite the fall in the value of the naira in recent times, there’s still a good deal that ₦500,000 can do for you—even if that means setting up a business. You have at least 10 options to choose from, all of which promise a plump return on your investment. We have discussed some of those options in this article. It’s up to you to go with one that ticks your personal boxes. Featured Image Source: IMD Business SchoolGot a suggestion? Contact us: editor@connectnigeria.com
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