By Emma Okonji
The Deji Alli ARM Young Talent Award (DAAYTA), organised by Asset and Resource Management Holding Company Limited (ARM), recently held an event in Lagos, where it announced Murtala Sani of WeSabi as the first place winner of its award.
Sani, emerged the winner from among the six finalists with his business proposition, WeSabi, and received the award worth of N12 million. The funding, according to the organisers, would be disbursed over a period of one year to develop his business plan, complete a five-month entrepreneurial education at the Pan Atlantic University’s Enterprise Development Centre in Lagos, and also to receive support for development of his venture, WeSabi through an accelerator programme by a reputable entrepreneurial hub in Lagos.
According to Sani, the urge to make a system better, drove him to start WeSabi, an initiative created to help households find reliable and pre-screened artisans in their neighbourhood through a website, mobile app and a USSD platform. It’s goal being to build Africa’s marketplace for the blue-collar sector.
In the fifth position was Oluwayomi Oyatoye of MechoMedics whose initiative aims to address the problem of poor adoption of the new Secondary School curriculum in Nigerian schools specifically in the area of implementing trade courses and entrepreneurship development.
Daniel Odediran of PrestPro came fourth with his idea, which aims to produce an energy-saving cooling system using clay for the preservation of freshly plucked tomatoes in order to extend their shelf life. Yusuf Shittu of “Jojolo” Neo Childcare, bagged the third position after explaining that Neo Childcare as a mobile child health service provider, seeks to provide top quality and affordable healthcare for children especially in low-income communities in Nigeria.
Dare Odumade of Chekkit, made the second position with his innovation, which is an anti-counterfeiting, asset-tracking and consumer feedback analytics platform and tool aimed at addressing the problem of counterfeiting, pilferage and inefficient supply of products.
The DAAYTA programme which was inaugurated by ARM in honour of its founding CEO, Mr. Deji Alli in 2015, is part of the company’s CSR efforts to educate and empower the younger generation to make a meaningful socio-economic impact in their immediate environment and the nation at large.
DAAYTA 2019 opened for applications in November 2018 receiving over 500 applications from talented and optimistic young entrepreneurs with 20 standing out after the initial selection before the final selection of six candidates was made.
Speaking about the outcome of the event, the Managing Director of ARM Academy, Ms Uche Azubuike, said: “We are happy that this huge part of our firm’s corporate social responsibility has yet again yielded fruits by empowering a good start-up business which will have a positive impact in the environment.”
