By Betsy Ramser Jaime
Samuel Emmanuel, was born in the Kaduna State in Nigeria, and is a native of the Enugu state in Nigeria. He explains, ‘I spent most of My childhood days in the northern part of Nigeria being the Kaduna state Nigeria before finally relocating to Lagos in the year 2001 to start a new life. I started my primary education in the year 2003, and graduated from college (secondary school) in the year 2014.’
As the first born son in his family, Samuel reflects that ‘life wasn’t easy’ which led him to enter the field of trade. In his profession, Samuel is a mobile phone engineer and he specializes in flashing, unlocking, and repairing mobile phones. In addition to his repair work, he also sells phone related products including: memory cards, earpieces, batteries, and mobile phones.
Samuel has now been a part of the Zidisha community since August 2019 and has been able to raise 11 loans during this time. Amazingly, his first two loans were under $5 and most recently he raised his largest loan yet for $1,931. During this time he’s also maintained an impressive repayment rate of 100%.
For Samuel, his Zidisha loans have allowed him to continue to purchase new items and re-stock his shop. For many small business owners, especially those with product based businesses, a lack of funds for inventory can be a huge deterrent from growth.
In Samuel’s case, since phone and technology products can be relatively expensive, it is important for him to maintain cash on hand so that he can continue to re-purchase or buy new products as needed or requested by his customers.
With his Zidisha funded loans, Samuel has been able to purchase: ‘memory cards, phone chargers, desktop chargers, earphones, mobile phones, and batteries.’ He’s also purchased additional items for his business such as, ‘a smoldering iron, soldering led, flux, paper tape, and other phone tools.’
On Dec 19, 2019, Samuel took to his discussion page and shared, ‘A big shout out goes to all my lenders for their kind gesture over my almost completed loan, the loan was indeed very helpful, you all shall be celebrated! God bless you all.’
As Samuel has continued to grow his business, he’s been able to add additional products to his inventory like, Ipads, and the latest models of smartphones and other tech products as these continue to be in high demand among his customers!
Would you like to help an entrepreneur like Samuel scale his or her business? Make sure to head on over to our Browse Projects page to read about Zidisha entrepreneurs around the world.
