‘I can’t leave my enterprise for any other job’

What is the story of your enterprise, Korrok Technologies?Officially, we started business around 2005. Before then, I as the sponsor had my hands on similar projects. From 2005 when we came to be identified with a definite platform, we have moved from one stage to the next. We started with the name, Grego Ventures. Then […]

What is the story of your enterprise, Korrok Technologies?
Officially, we started business around 2005. Before then, I as the sponsor had my hands on similar projects. From 2005 when we came to be identified with a definite platform, we have moved from one stage to the next. We started with the name, Grego Ventures. Then we had Grego Vintage International before our present name.
It has been a process of setting up as a duly registered, tax-paying institution. Mine is a sole proprietor business registered as a limited liability company. Apart from me, no shareholder exists anywhere, but I have an institutionalized board of directors. The directors are well-experienced people in different callings to advise our business model.
We’ve been having challenges. The business environment has not been healthy, and this is why we appreciate Media Trust. Media Trust has done something that other people and organizations should emulate.
What were you doing before you started out as an entrepreneur in 2005?
I was producing soap in my wife’s kitchen. Following our vision, we registered Grego Enterprises in 1999. We were not operating. It was just a vision. To take care of some new development, we had to register Grego Vintage in 2005. korrok Technologies was adopted and registered last year and it is under it that we now do our business. Korrok Technologies came mainly because of what Media Trust did (after Media Trust paid the first N2.5 million of the N5 million award). We had a new capacity to go bigger. We used the first N2.5 million to upgrade our production processes. We bought new equipment and employed more staff. We had eight people, now we have 12. We also generate more revenue than we were doing before; because we invested in more raw materials and now produce more goods than we were producing. We did some branding too. For our Swash Klin, we had to go to Ghana to get labels. Now, people say this is like a foreign product. It’s money. We knew what we were doing before but we didn’t have the money.
Why did you go to Ghana for the Swash Klin branding?
I couldn’t get it here. It’s not available in Jos.
Still, why Ghana?
There was a company in Lagos that could produce it, but at a higher price because of high cost of production I’m sure. I went to Ghana where I could get it at a cheaper rate.
How exactly did you start this manufacturing business in your wife’s kitchen?
We were producing soap to give as gift to our friends, especially when it came to Christmas season such as now. We would produce the specialty soap: bathing soap, wrap them and put signature and give to our friends, and they liked it! In fact, it was such people that motivated me to go into this business.
You were doing bathing soap, not even cloth washing soap which does not have to be so refined?
We were doing bathing soap.
What was the name?
From day one, I called the name, Rozme. So, the name and brand Rozme is older than the company. What is Rozme is private to me and my family, but it’s the name we gave the soap, and it’s the name the particular soap brand still bears. And it is our highest selling product.
When was it that you started in your wife’s kitchen?
This was 1999-2000. We went on and on in amateur status for years till 2005 when we started as a duly recognized business venture. This was when we decided that since this product has been accepted and we were even getting paid orders to produce that we chose to go the whole hog. How we ventured out in 2005 was duplicated last year in our business. We are producing soap, a bathing gel that contains tamarine. It comes in a tube, like a tooth paste. It’s innovative. A problem we have with hard soap is having to dry it. To dry the normal solid soap to retain the regular shape and smooth form requires sophisticated equipment. We do the solid soap, but this bathing gel, a paste, does not need drying and it comes unique.
Do you mean there is no soap like it in the country?
You can quote me. There is no soap like it in the country.
How do you acquire the technology to do your products, especially the bathing?
As technologists, we keep working and thinking. What do our customers want? How do we produce it? We work every day at it.
You say you are a technologist. How?
I’m an applied scientist. I worked in a company for five years, first as a lab technician and then growing through the ranks, receiving training. As a technologist, I am constantly looking at scientific ways of creating things.
Let’s take it this way: you worked as a lab technician. What qualified you, in the first place, to work in the lab?
I had a diploma in lab science. And I did Chemistry, in the University of Jos.
Back to your factory: from Rozme soap in the beginning; how many products do you have now?
Six; the Rozme soap, a herbal antiseptic beauty soap made from raw materials found within Plateau State; carrot oil, a natural skin lubricating oil made from Sesame oil, mineral oil and carrot extracts; the bathing gel that I’ve also mentioned; shea butter soap made from shea butter, Rose Mary leaves, fermented milk and carrot powder; Ebo Clear, a skin disinfectant and nourishment cream; Swash Klin, the branding of which I’ve discussed. It is a multipurpose cleansing fluid made principally from Neem oil.
You operate at the Federal Government’s technology incubation centre: how did you make it to the centre?
In 2008 when I was still producing in my house I made a presentation of my products at a programme organized by a group called Inventors and Innovators Association, here in Jos. It was at the programme that I met officials of the National Board for Technology Incubation (NBTI), the Federal Government agency that has this centre (the Jos Technology Incubation Centre) and runs it in collaboration with the Plateau State Government.
We talked and after a process of checks on my capacity, they admitted me in 2009 as the first business to be incubated here. My coming here has helped the business. I have constant electricity and water. The centre has a borehole and we are supplied electricity not by epileptic NEPA but by NESCO. There are other things we are supposed to get, such as linkages to R & D (research and development) and funding.
We are not getting these things because I think the centre is itself underfunded.
What is your perspective on Media Trust’s entrepreneurship financial award?
One of the members of my board of directors called my attention to a Daily Trust’s advert on the sponsorship and award for excellence in entrepreneurship. I applied and after a rigorous process to determine my qualification, I was chosen for it. What Media Trust is doing is a giant stride in nation building. Without Media Trust’s intervention, you will probably have come to meet us on a table with nothing to do because we are not empowered to do what we have the idea to do.
Perhaps, Media Trust doesn’t know the significance of what they have done for me and for entrepreneurship development. There was a drawback, though. Much of the first N2.5 million that they gave me was wasted because, contrary to what I was promised, there was a wide time gap before the second N2.5 million came. I was told the balance would come after six months, but it didn’t until after over a year. Meanwhile, I made plans for six months, spending money, and had to repeat some of the expenses, including arrangement of the ceremony to receive the balance, before the balance finally came on November 27. All the same, I’m immensely grateful to Media Trust. If many other organizations will go the extra mile and reach out to entrepreneurs with finances, entrepreneurship will thrive.
What paid job could be attractive enough to make you quit Korrok Technologies Ltd?
I’m here not only to stay but to grow it and bring in other people. I’m not comfortable financially. Someone challenged me the other day, ‘Why is it that you don’t have a car?’ I told him that I have a car and it is in the garage; that it will cost me like N150, 000 to put it back on the road. I’m young, but I tell you this: I’m not that young man who will jump at a job because there is a fanciful car attached to it. No way! This is my calling. This is my dream. Nobody can get me out of it.