27-year-old Kaduna-based entrepreneur and ex-corps member, Henrietta Gimbiya-Barde, says she grew a N6,000 agro-processing business to N2.5 million and six employees in three years.
Ms Gimbiya-Barde said in Kaduna on Thursday that her company, HIGIM Food Processing Company, processes and adds value to agricultural products for consumption.
She added that the company was a subsidiary of HIGIM Investment Nigeria Limited, established in 2019 to process agricultural products into consumable powder.
Ms Gimbiya-Barde said some of the products were blended with other nourishing elements to meet the nutritious needs of everyone, including people who want to gain weight.
According to her, the products are also good for people with diabetes, pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers, children, the aged and people with hypertension.
She identified the products include white beans flour for ‘akara’, ‘moinmoin’ and ‘gbegiri’; finger millet powder, also known as tamba; tom brown, wheat and plantain flour. Others, according to her, are fonio grains, also known as acha, blended with date fruit, ginger and clove; chilli pepper spice, ginger powder, and blended millet with tamarind for pap (Kunun Tsamiya).
She explained that she began the processing business with N6,000 in 2019 after completing her national service and grew it to a N2.5 million business in three years.
“After the one-year NYSC in 2019, I began searching for a job with little success, and the entrepreneurship in me began taking over. Because of my flair for advertising, I began marketing a friend’s product who processed finger millet, got customers and supplied the products for a little token,” explained Ms Gimbiya-Barde. “After a while, my friends stopped production, and I kept getting calls from my customers asking for the product. That was when I decided to go into the processing business since I already have a customer base.”
