First Bank Nigeria hosted a webinar on “The ABCs of Accessing Finance for your Business”. The webinar was designed to expose SMEs to the various finance opportunities that they can access and utilize to foster the continued growth of their businesses.
The webinar was anchored by Damilola Salawu. According to him, the lifecycle of SMEs includes the early stage, growth stage, and maturity stage. Early-stage SMEs are businesses under the first stage of the growth cycle.
During this stage, the main priority is to find and obtain customers, develop a product or service and build a brand identity. The webinar noted that the key challenges that early-stage SMEs face include funding, hiring staff, managing cash reserves
Financing options for early-stage SMEs include;
- Personal investments/ bootstrapping,
- Funding from friends and family,
- Early-stage venture capital fund,
- Government Grants,
- Funding from incubators and accelerators,
- SME loans,
- The credit union, cooperative, and thrift societies
SMEs that make it past the early stage, move into the growth stage. Growth stage SMEs are already generating revenues and growing their client base. The funds received by growth stage SMEs are mainly used to attract new customers and retain existing ones, develop new products and services, and develop methods of increasing profits and revenue.
Financing options for growth-stage SMEs include;
- Private equity investment
- Venture capital funding
- Equity financing
- Debt financing
- Bank Loans
- Receivable based financing
- Crowdfunding
SMEs in the maturity stage are companies that have been around for many years and sell products and services that customers and businesses use on a regular basis.
- Financing options for maturity stage SMEs include;
- Mezzanine financing
- Debt financing
- Equity financing
