As rent, levies and overheads keep rising, young Nigerians take their enterprises online, building businesses from smartphones, writes JULIANA UCHE-OKOBI.
For an increasing number of young Nigerians, entrepreneurship no longer begins with searching for a shop, negotiating rent or putting up a signboard. It begins with a smartphone, an internet connection and a product or service to sell.
Across Nigeria, young entrepreneurs are using WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and other social-media platforms to advertise products, receive orders, communicate with customers and arrange deliveries. Some operate entirely from home, while others combine online businesses with paid employment.
The model is particularly attractive because it allows entrepreneurs to reach customers beyond their immediate neighbourhood without taking on the cost of maintaining a physical shop.
For Janet Ndubuisi, the transition to entrepreneurship followed four frustrating years of job hunting. A young graduate, she eventually learnt how to produce liquid soap and perfume through a youth empowerment programme organised by the Delta State Government.
After completing the programme, Ndubuisi returned to Lagos in 2020 and started her perfume production business, choosing social media as her principal marketing channel.
She said the decision was driven by the opportunity to reach a wider market while avoiding the financial and time pressures associated with running a physical shop.
“I opted for online marketing because I didn’t want to go and meet any agent to pay agreement and agent fee or any form of rent before starting my business,” she said.
Ndubuisi added that a physical shop would restrict her customer base largely to residents, passers-by and visitors around the location, whereas online marketing allows her to reach customers within and outside Nigeria.
She said the business has grown to the point where she sells more than 100 bottles of perfume in a month.
Her experience illustrates why social commerce is becoming an entry point for young Nigerians with limited capital and those who want to take advantage of the wider reach of online marketing. Instead of committing scarce funds to rent and other fixed costs, entrepreneurs can begin from home and concentrate their resources on production, marketing and customer acquisition.
John Ifechukwu, a staff member of an insurance company in Lagos, offers another example of the transition.
Before securing his insurance job, Ifechukwu operated a furniture business in Agege, Lagos. Rather than abandon the business after taking up paid employment, he closed his shop and moved the operation online. According to him, the decision was largely prompted by rising rent.
“I had to close my shop, which I think was a good decision, because the rent kept increasing every year,” he said. Ifechukwu recalled that within the four years he operated from the shop, his annual rent rose from N200,000 at the beginning to N500,000.
By moving online, he eliminated the rent, while gaining access to customers beyond his immediate community. Although he now spends money on online advertising, he said the cost remains considerably lower than maintaining a physical shop. “Now, I no longer pay rent and I have more visibility and sell more furniture than I did while in the shop,” he said.
The furniture seller said he now sells multiple sets of furniture, including school furniture, in a month. He markets the products through Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. “It is better for me here online than when I was maintaining the shop,” he said.
Like Ndubuisi, Ifechukwu’s experience points to a shift in how some small businesses think about location. While a physical shop depends heavily on passing customers and the surrounding community, online stores and social-media marketing allows a seller to put products in front of people who may have no physical connection to the business location.
For Mercy Ukachukwu, the attraction of online commerce was not only lower operating costs but also better control over production. Ukachukwu, a caterer in Awada, Onitsha, Anambra State, operated from a small shop until 2025, when a friend encouraged her to move the business online. She closed the shop, registered her business name and began advertising her food online from home. The change, she said, quickly increased demand.
“Within a few days, people started placing orders for soups and stew, and I became busier than I was in the shop to the point that I had to hire some workers to help me with the cooking,” Ukachukwu said.
One of the biggest benefits, she added, is that she now cooks mainly according to orders, reducing the amount of food left unsold at the end of the day. “The patronage has been amazing and the best part is that I only cook what is ordered; I don’t have leftover food anymore,” she said. For a food business, that difference can have a direct effect on profitability because unsold meals represent wasted ingredients, labour and energy.
Ukachukwu’s experience also demonstrates that moving online does not necessarily mean remaining a one-person operation. Increased demand can create the need for additional workers, allowing a small home-based business to develop into a larger enterprise.
The experiences of Ndubuisi, Ifechukwu and Ukachukwu reflect a broader attraction to social commerce among small businesses: lower fixed costs combined with access to a potentially larger customer base.
Benjamin Babalola, a financial expert, said social-media platforms have become important commercial tools for Nigerians seeking to establish businesses.
He said the cost and conditions associated with physical shops were compelling more entrepreneurs to explore online alternatives.
“Shops are increasingly becoming hard for people to rent. To rent a shop, you pay agent and commission fees before the actual rent. And, each year, some landlords increase the rent without considering whether business is moving or not,” he said.
According to Babalola, online businesses can avoid many of those fixed costs while making products visible to customers beyond the entrepreneur’s immediate location.
“When you are online, you don’t have rent problems and you make your business known to the whole world,” he said.
The experiences of the three entrepreneurs support part of that argument, although operating online does not mean running a business for free.
Instead of shop rent, online entrepreneurs may incur costs for internet data, digital advertising, product photography, packaging, payment services and delivery. Some also spend money on influencers and sponsored posts to attract customers in an increasingly crowded digital marketplace.
The difference is that these costs can often be adjusted according to the scale of the business, unlike a shop lease that imposes a fixed financial commitment, regardless of the level of daily patronage or revenue.
The growing use of social media for business also raises an important financial question: how much of the sales generated online actually becomes profit?
An entrepreneur may record significant monthly sales but still have little left after replacing stock, paying delivery charges, purchasing data, advertising products and meeting other operating expenses.
For young businesses, proper bookkeeping, therefore, becomes as important as online visibility.
The distinction between turnover and profit is particularly important for entrepreneurs who receive customer payments through personal bank accounts and use the same funds for business and household expenses. Without proper records, it can be difficult to determine whether a business is genuinely growing.
There are also challenges around digital skills, reliable internet access, logistics, customer trust and the ability to maintain a steady supply of products.
Yet the experiences of many entrepreneurs show that social commerce is doing more than providing another advertising channel. It is changing the cost structure of some small businesses and allowing entrepreneurs to reach markets without first securing a physical location.
For Ndubuisi, the smartphone has allowed her to build a perfume business after years of unsuccessful job hunting. In Ifechukwu’s case, it provided a way to keep his furniture business alive while working in the insurance sector, securing an extra source of income. For Ukachukwu, it created a route to more orders while reducing food waste and eventually creating jobs.
Their businesses differ, but the underlying strategy is similar: use the internet to reach customers first and take on physical infrastructure only when it becomes necessary.
This does not mean the traditional shop is disappearing. For many businesses, particularly those requiring physical interaction, storage or customer inspection, a shop remains important. But for a growing category of young entrepreneurs, it is no longer the automatic first step.
The smartphone is increasingly becoming the first storefront. And for young Nigerians trying to enter business in an environment of rising operating costs, that shift could determine not only how they sell but also whether they can afford to start at all.
