Brandberg Global , an organisation aimed at providing valuable resources for start-ups to enable them to perform at their highest potential created an online platform to assist local start-ups to have abundance access to information about the entrepreneurial journey. The initiative which is run by Lisias Uusiku and Paul Nakashololo is tasked to expose young entrepreneurs to a lot of fields for them to effectively run the businesses as the said lack of information, knowledge on how to navigate the start-ups hampers the success of such initiatives, as well as not fully understanding their markets.
Uusiku, who is the head of innovation said the agency has been working with various small businesses around Namibia for over a year and “as we worked closely with start-ups, we noticed that start-ups in Namibia face a lot of challenges and we always had a strong passion to help young people to excel at business and be active in the development of Namibia as a whole”.
The duo will be covering an array of topics such as ways to raise funding in Namibia, the importance of creativity in business, how to market your brand, choosing the right business partner and many more.
“We launched a YouTube channel which is dedicated to start-ups and small businesses. We want to push for economic freedom by encouraging young people to partake in business. We believe that start-ups can play a very significant role in building a strong economy,” he detailed. Uusiku is an award-winning entrepreneur who has been awarded by start-up competitions such as the Sanlam NBII Innovation works and The Tony Elumelu Foundation, which awards entrepreneurs with innovative ideas from all over Africa. He has worked with start-ups in Namibia such as Pro Investments cc, Foster Digital Education group, and now Brandberg Creative agency and is a content creator who has worked on various projects around Namibia for organisations including The Namibia University of Science and Technology and The Office of The President.
Nakashololo who is the initiative’s managing director has worked as a marketing director for the past five years and has directly been involved in the development of various start-ups. Through his marketing agency, he has spearheaded an integration programme with the Namibian University of Science and Technology to help train some of the marketing students and give them practical experience of working within a start-up.
With the combined experience of 13 years and due to a common vision, Uusiku and Nakashololo merged their agencies in 2020 to form Brandberg Global! “We have a team that deals with extensive research, so we are able to put out quality information that is tailored specifically for start-ups,” mentioned Nakashololo.
He said: “We would love to use the channel to guide, assist and inform entrepreneurs on how to navigate the corporate world and keep them educated on how to balance the start-up life with their personal lives. The video content we will be putting up will be in animation form. People are naturally visual learners, so we decided to animate different concepts and package them into videos that make the information easily digestible.”
The duo believes whatever economic challenges we are facing, the country can be fixed if a strong private sector is developed and the best way to do that is to get young people involved in entrepreneurship.
– psiririka@nepc.com.na