Kasope Ladipo-Ajai of OmoAlata is our #BellaNaijaWCW this Week!

Preparing a meal has to be one of the most stressful things ever (especially in Nigeria): from getting the raw ingredients, to getting them ready for cooking, and then cleaning up afterwards (or as you cook as some people prefer).

It’s not just stressful, but also time-consuming. Then add the demands of urbanisation and industrialisation (read your job and traffic). Phew! Shoutout to everyone who say they love cooking.

But a woman is making all that go away by building a business to meet your food needs.

Our #BellaNaijaWCW this week Kasope Ladipo-Ajai founded OmoAlata in 2012, “a Nigerian food service company focused on producing hygienically processed and packaged local Nigerian soups, spices, and peppers.”

Kasope decided to start her company after visiting several countries and discovering that most of the ingredients for cooking Nigerian meals were not produced or packaged in Nigeria.

This is so, not because Nigeria does not or cannot produce them, but because of lack of packaging and export.

She decide to change this. She left her job as a business support analyst with one of the airlines in Nigeria to venture into entrepreneurship. A bold step we must say.

Her and her partner set aside personal funds to package locally sourced peppers. After all the training (formal and informal) on how to run a business like this and the necessary accreditations from regulatory bodies, Kasope put out OmoAlata’s flagship product – OmoAlata “Pepper Mix” – out in the market.

Today, OmoAlata’s products are sold in over 25 stores.

In 2015, Kasope won first prize in the She Leads Africa Pitch Competition and in the same year, was nominated in The Future Awards Prize in Business.

In 2016, she was named in Forbes Africa’s 30 Most Promising Young Entrepreneurs list.