In today’s episode, we speak with Oduwa Agboneni, the founder of Neni’s Autocare in Lagos.
Actually, Oduwa was already a serial entrepreneur before starting her own car repair shop in the bustling Yaba district of Lagos.
She had worked as an engineer for a telco company, started a side hustle doing online ticketing and reservations and then built a travel agency before setting out to to start Neni’s Autocare, breaking into a heavily male dominated industry and essentially reinventing how it is done.
“The most important thing before you go into entrepreneurship? You need to have passion for that stuff. Because when every other thing is not working out, it is your passion that will keep you going.”
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With a strong focus on preventive maintenance, excellent customer service, customer education, hiring almost exclusively female technicians and catering to a female clientele, she has attracted not only B2C customers but even household names such as Uber.
A true changemaker, Oduwa is using the non-profit arm of her business to empower girls with technical skills and automotive training, in line with her mission to promote a positive representation of women in Engineering and increasing their self-confidence through automotive care knowledge.
In this interview we speak with Oduwa about:
- Goalsetting
- The importance of developing a strong support system as an entrepreneur
- How Oduwa transitioned from being an employee to an entrepreneur AND
- How she is using her business and her not-for-profit to do both service delivery and advocacy
There is a bit of background noise in the interview. Apologies for that. But don’t worry, it is authentic in the sense that we did the interview right there in busy Yaba district at Oduwa’s workshop and we promise, the things she shares in the interview are worth sticking it out and overhearing the background noise. =)
Check out more Interviews with African Changemakers on the AfricaX Blog.
