From Kitchen Recipe to Retail Shelf With Itoro Henry Willie and the Host Francis Onuk

Okay, my brand, the name IT Smart Grow Foods, because I just sat down, my food is basically for smart people, for smart children.

So that was how I gave out the name IT Smart Grow Foods.

So most of the ingredients we use are the natural ingredients that we know, the guinea corn, the millet, the oat, the cashew, the almond, like everything natural grains that we see on a normal basis is not something new or it's not something that we don't know but some people don't just know how to turn these things into a homemade cereal so we just formulated it with all the grains the millet the yellow corn the guinea corn, the pumpkin seeds, like the natural seed that we all know, sunflower and all of that.

So that's basically the ingredients that we use in our foods.

Awesome.

I'm going to drop the phone lines because I know some people might be waiting to call to ask you questions, how you started the business, how you were able to navigate the many challenges and all of those things.

So you can call us live on 0700-000-1069.

It's 0700-000-1069. or on zero zero nine two two two one zero six nine zero eight zero nine two two two one zero six nine or you send a whatsapp or sms or still call zero zero nine triple three one zero six nine zero eight zero nine three three three one zero six nine we're also live on facebook at excel169.fm so you could go watch us live and also ask questions in the comment section all right now let's go into something that's really is something that challenges a lot of entrepreneurs like we're saying funding you you were lucky enough let's say lucky enough to start the business with your husband support your sister-in-law support right

yeah

how have you been able to sustain funding and looking for alternative sources of funding to grow your business

Okay, funding is one thing that has pulled us like a little bit back because with the right funding, sometimes people say consistency is not enough when there's no funding.

So something that might take you seven, 10 years to achieve with the right funding, you can achieve it in months and even in a year.

So we are still sourcing for fundings.

We are not yet there.

We are not even there.

We are like a baby business, petty business, exactly.

So we are not there yet.

We are still sourcing.

looking for ways to apply for grants, government support, individual support for us to be able to scale up our business.

So

it has not really been easy, but we are trying, but definitely we need that right support

for

our business to grow, to market, to expand, to tell more families.

We need money, even in ads, you know, Facebook, Instagram, social media ads, you need money to actually run all those ads.

So we are not yet there, but we are trying our best.