07 Mar 2019

In an era where being a graduate cannot spare one from unemployment, many find themselves idling. 

Not so for Ms Ndiye Sekao, a 33-year-old woman, who completed her Degree in Business Management in 2011. 

In an interview recently, Ms Sekao said she looked for a job for two years after her graduation to no avail, and in 2013, she decided to get into the business of selling clothes. 

“I remember at that point I only had P400, which was not enough to start the business,” she said. 

She said she then decided to  raise money to start the clothing business, so she bought groceries with P400, with the aim of selling food to raise funds.

Ms Sekao said she used the utensils available from her home to prepare the food to sell and from the P400, she spared P50 to print a few flyers to advertise her catering business.

She indicated that she supplied lunch and invited potential clients to place lunch orders and she would cook pap, rice and samp on a daily basis and deliver to people at their workplaces a.

“Money was coming in, but the whole thing was just tedious because I was not doing it for the love of it, but because I wanted money,” she said. 

Ms Sekao said she operated the food business for three months and stopped because she had raised the money she needed to start the clothing business. 

“I now had P4 000 and could now buy the clothes I wanted to sell,” she said. 

She said selling food appeared like she was stooping low because her peers, who knew how well she did at school, could not understand why she was selling food.

However, she was persistent and did not care much about what people thought or said as her focus was on the goal she wanted to achieve.

Ms Sekao said she invested P3 000 into her clothing business, buying specifically female clothes from South Africa. 

She said she informed her friends and people in her neighbourhood that she was selling clothes. 

“I tried by all means to buy the clothes that were in season at the time because I had to impress the first time,” she said.

She said even though it took her two months to sell off her stock, in the end she managed to make 100 per cent profit. 

She said she continued selling clothes until she started buying bales of clothes from overseas in 2015. 

Ms Sekao said her ambition was to open a boutique. ENDS