Back in 2015 we realised that there were few effective small businesses forums in Zimbabwe and therefore formed this forum with the intention of helping entrepreneurs to access opportunities information as well as linking them up for markets and capital access.
We adopted a Japanese concept called Mirasapo which essentially means the support of future needs of entrepreneurs. Mirasapo is a digital ecosystem which links entrepreneurs across Japan and has a lot of paid experts who are a phone call away for the millions of entrepreneurs in Japan.
Our challenge was on the business model to support entrepreneurs. Classroom support? This would mean support to a few hundreds in a country with more than 5 million entrepreneurs. This is why we opted for the Mirasapo model and it involved the following;
Opening a Facebook Forum and sharing business information as well as helping entrepreneurs to network.
Opening various Whatsapp Forums where members helped to network and using the platform for markets access and resources access.
We linked the Facebook and Whatsapp forums to this website allowing for free flow of information. From Facebook to Whatsapp and vice versa. The website to Whatsapp and Facebook and vice versa. The end result is an active community of entrepreneurs which has reached 150,000 with 81,000 being active on Facebook and 15,000 active on Whatsapp.
The extra benefit of the active members is that most of them are well connected especially on Whatsapp with some attending events such as forum meetings.
Our model has therefore been a success although there is more work required in quality networking.
Some of our forum events in pictures over the past 3 years. There are more on our gallery.
