SMEDAN, iTEKKU Sign MoU to Upscale MSMEs Growth

Oluchi Chibuzor

The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) and iTEKKU, an online marketplace, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to upscale Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in the country.

The partnership aims to onboard MSMEs registered with SMEDAN into the iTEKKU online marketplace for them to upload their catalogues of products and services for easy marketing and seamless business transaction.

Speaking at the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding in Lagos, yesterday, the Director-General of the SMEDAN, Olawale Fasanya, said the whole idea was to improve Nigerian SMEs competitiveness and scalability despite the economic challenges facing the country.

“You brought the proposal to us and we found that it will add value to MSMEs. We felt it would enhance MSMEs competitiveness based on some of our discussions.

“Apart from what we have in the MOU, we are also bringing some more value and some of the people that would come on board here will be able to enjoy a medical insurance at a subsidized rates for their businesses and then Sterling bank also want to join hands with us to provide advisory services for the most of the MSMEs that would be captured under this scheme.

“We are excited that it is young people like you that are driving these, because part of our priority clientele is women and youth. We want to make sure that we work with a lot of youths with innovative ideas that can easily impact the ecosystem. We believe that you will put all your energy into these as we are ready to drive crowd into this. We will find a way to eventually have these on our website and have a way this can now link up to eventual users of the platform, ” he stated.

Commenting on the partnership and its benefits to MSMEs in the country, the Co-Founder, Olupitan Ayomide, said they are looking at boosting SMEs in Nigeria because “we want to scale them on our platform and be able to improve on the goals of SMEDAN.

He explained that Merchants, Consumers and Resellers, Logistics and Last mile delivery, Credit (Buy-now-pay-later) and Payment Systems are among the stakeholders connected to their platforms.

“iTEKKU is solving problems across various sectors majorly targeting the SME’s for them to scale up their businesses by exposing them to the markets, users that would come on our platforms to buy from them.