Leveraging ICT in Entrepreneurial Ventures II: ICT as the Product or Service of the Venture

ICT is particularly attractive for new entrepreneurial ventures because of the proliferation of the web and the increasingly complex things people have to do. The product options run from manufacturing to software services.

Here are a few of the opportunities that exist in the Nigerian and developing country market. Even though most of these are already crowded, with some creativity and innovativeness, an entrepreneur can find ways to cut down the price even further or even come up with high value products that they can sell at even higher prices to niche markets.

1. Provision of affordable computers: Even though the price of computers has fallen dramatically in recent years, there is still a large demand for computers especially by students and institutions of education. Businesses are also now using computers by default rather than typewriters. The secret is to find out how to make these computers even cheaper than most of the big manufacturers can.
2. Computer peripherals to help people get more value out of their computers. These include not just common printers and scanners but more specialized input devices like digitizing tables tablets for architects and artists, larger than ordinary printers and scanners, plotters etc.
3. Device Repair and maintenance: A lot of money lies in people’s offices in the form of equipment that is bad and cannot be repaired. These equipment can not be repaired either because there is no one competent to do the repairs and/or the parts needed for replacement are not available. This presents an opportunity for a technical services venture that helps people save money by repairing their bad equipment.
4. Re-furbished equipment: This builds on the last idea … you buy broken-down equipment from people and give-away prices (after all they haven’t been able to fix them), repair them and by cleaning them well, you could sell them at good margins.
5. Mobile IT Support – this would probably work best in middle-class and higher neighbourhoods – people with computer issues can call a number and have a technician be on ground within the hour to fix the problem.
6. Up-to-date demographic data for business intelligence. Suppose I want to start a new business or expand an existing business into a new geographical area. Wouldn’t it be helpful if I had some kind of data related to the demographics of the target market that would help me plan my strategy? But the reality is that such business data – demographics, updated directories etc.

Obviously, these ideas have not been explored deeply in developing countries as they have been in developed countries. So long ….

~ by mukom777 on May 16, 2008.