Post by Ismail AbdulAzeez on Mar 28, 2013 23:21:39 GMT 1
He belongs to the class of those who are living out their entrepreneurial dreams. After several years running after a white collar job, he retraced his steps to pursue his passion in farming. Today, Ismail Abdulazeez, a trained accountant and Managing Director, Thy Snail and Grasscutter Farms, is playing big in the snail and grass cutter farming business
Ismail Abdulazeez’s major dream, like many of his peers, was to become a successful chartered accountant and perhaps, work in banks or some of the big organisations. Though he didn’t come from a well to do family, he pursued his ambition with uncommon vigour that ultimately made him an accountant
However, as he trudged on in life, Abdulazeez’s perception, just like everyone else that understands the value of education, changed. His pursuit of accounting profession was no longer solely to become a chartered accountant working in banks or big corporations, but to use the knowledge as a means to an end.
As a child, he had passion for agriculture, having been involved in subsistence farming along with his parents and was said to have developed so much interest in farming that no matter how much academic certifi cate he obtains, he would still be a big farmer. “When we were still young, I did subsistence farming, planting maize and some other things just to sustain the family and since then, I used to tell myself that I will do my own farming the way the Oyinbos (Europeans) do their own farming,” he recounts in an encounter with Business Courage.
To some extent, Abdulazeez now seem to be living his dream as he is fully into agriculture, after a brief spell in the corporate world.
A trained accountant, Abdulazeez started his working career as account clerk with Micom Cables and Wires Ltd in 1997. After completing his ATS 1 and 2 examinations, he joined Dohagro Allied Ltd, a rice and sugar distributing company, as an account offi cer and worked there for just six months. Thereafter, he joined Wale Adeleke & Co (Chartered Accountants), an auditing fi rm, as an audit trainee between 1998 and 1999, but the urge to be his own boss made him to resign his appointment.
After leaving Wale Adeleke &Co, Abdulazeez, along with his wife, decided to run a Nursery and Primary School from a rented apartment but shortly thereafter, he decided to further his education and left the school project under his wife’s care.
However, few months after the school started, the property owner issued a quit notice and as he narrated to Business Courage, “We left almost in tears and had to inform the parents of the pupils that had already registered with the school that we could no longer continue with the running of the school.” That abruptly ended his dream of being an entrepreneur.
Somehow, Abdulazeez found himself moving back into the labour market as he later joined Samcas Oil Mill, a palm kernel oil manufacturing fi rm in 2000. Again, six months after, he was out of Samcas, and returned to the school project, but this time, in his own house at Ewupe Ijaniye Village, Sango Otta, Ogun State.
Incidentally, the journey into his dream job of being a big time farmer started when he fi nally moved into his house in 2003. “Being a new site, we started seeing snails here and there, and I started picking them. So, I decided to check the articles on snail farming I had been keeping and in one of the articles, I came across the name of one man Mr. Bright. I traced him and attended some of his seminars. After I came back from the trainings, I did my own research and started my own farms. As God would have it, everything started fl ourishing,” he recounted in an interview with Business Courage.
Luckily for him, market for his snails was never a problem as there were ready-made markets. However, an awry experience he had with a customer who deposited some money for the snails but couldn’t get his order on the appointed date spurred him into thinking about how to enlarge the scope of the business. “The experience I had when I had just started made me to have a rethink. Then, we didn’t have enough space, but somebody deposited some money for me to supply some snails but somehow, I was unable to meet the demand. When the man came, he started shouting on me, making a lot of noise and threatening me. That experience put more pressure on us to do everything that was needed to be done in order to make sure that we are able to meet up with supply,” he said.
Abdulazeez believes that snails are not something you have to beg people to buy, stressing that, once you have it, you just have to have rest of mind. Besides, according to him the demand for snail is usually higher than the supply thus making the market potential of snail inexhaustible locally and internationally.
To him, snail farming has been adjudged to be most lucrative farming venture presently with far less capital investment and bountiful returns. It has lower risk compared to other livestock farming, while virtually every part of snail is of vital use in food, pharmaceutical, manufacturing and fi shing industries, noting that snail is an export commodity, which has value next to gold in overseas countries.
Snail farming requires small capital, and for a start-up capital of about N100,000, Abdulazeez believes one can generate up to N1 million in just one year. “You can conveniently earn income a thousand fold higher than your present earnings. You can keep your present job and do this on part time since it doesn’t require much time. This is a real export market that earns foreign revenue without you running from pillar to post. This is not fi ction but factual. Not imaginary but a reality. No stress, no time consuming, no odour, no noise and no irritation,” he said.
With as little as N50, 000, he says one can go into snail business but noted that it requires training. The need for training, he said, stems from the fact that, though there are snails around available to be picked, they (the snails) have species. “Many people see snails here and there. Some people take it as meat. But quite a number don’t know how to go about rearing them. This is made worse because snails, which belong to the family of animal called Mollusca, is a hermaphrodite. It has both the female and male sexual organs; so one cannot really distinguish between the male and female specie of it,” he explained.
In Nigeria, he said, there are about 17 species, but only three of them; Ashatina Mulica, Ashatina Ashatina and Ashatina Maginata are very profi table for business.
To the Thy Snail farm boss, many of those into snail farming business are mostly unwilling to let others know about the farming methodology. He regretted that the techniques are often shrouded in secrecy but noted that, snail farming is as easy as ABC, stressing that the only thing the snails may constantly demand for is attention and care. “They hardly fall sick. You don’t have to buy their food and you may not have to spend much to create an abode for them. The beauty of it all is that, the snails reproduce rapidly. They are capable of producing hundreds of eggs, which hatch into snails. It is now possible to produce one million snails worth more than N5 million twice a year. This, he said are made possible because of the availability of very highly prolifi c Achatina Achatina species of snails, which lay 200-400 in one batch 2-3 times a year.”
Still yearning for deeper entrepreneurial deftness, Abudlazeez is also involved in grass cutter raring business. Like he did when he started the snail business, Abdulazeez said he went as far as Ghana, Republic of Benin and Ivory Coast to see how they set up standard grass cutter farms.
Grass cutter (a rodent family), like many rodent species, he noted, have been and continued to be a delicacy in a number of countries, in Latin America, Africa and Asia where markets exist for a wide variety of rodent species and grass cutters are often preferred over other sources of meat. The vast majority of these animals are still gathered from the wild and several species have been hunted so extensively that they are now extinct. And this, he said, offers small-scale farmers, investors, businessmen and all those with wealth-mind set, an economic incentive for raising grass cutters in captivity.
According to him, the business of grass cutter farming is very lucrative as well. This is because, while they can easily be reared at home, they command a very good selling price as a family made up of fi ve grass cutters is sold for N30,000 or more. “A serious and dedicated farmer can have close to 200 families at a time” he said.
Today, apart from the grass cutters farm which he has at his residence, there are other farms he owns at Ikorodu, Abeokuta, Lagos, and some other places.
Not just contented with his snails and grass cutter farming business, Abdulazeez has also established a consulting fi rm called, Thy Consulting, which he said was his contribution towards impacting positively on the society. “While the business continued to fl ourish, most people started coming to me. And I am a kind of person that loves impacting knowledge on people. I don’t like hiding knowledge, so I started consulting, training people. As at today, we have trained more than 2,000 people across Nigeria. When people come for training, we expose them to all the species and the advantages of the species,” he said.
With N25, 000 per person, Abdulazeez trains more and more people on a weekly basis at his farm as he has written a manual titled “The Beauty of Snail Farming”, and also produced a VCD on Practical Commercial Snail Breeding, to enable them know all the techniques and secrets of commercial snail farming.
Presently, aside Thy Snail & Grass cutter Farms, he also has in his kitty, The Thy Agro Allied Enterprises for beekeeping and honey business. He also has the Thy Global Investment Ltd for snail and commodities from Nig
Source: nationalmirroronline.net/new/a-mid-size-agro-entrepreneur/
Ismail Abdulazeez’s major dream, like many of his peers, was to become a successful chartered accountant and perhaps, work in banks or some of the big organisations. Though he didn’t come from a well to do family, he pursued his ambition with uncommon vigour that ultimately made him an accountant
However, as he trudged on in life, Abdulazeez’s perception, just like everyone else that understands the value of education, changed. His pursuit of accounting profession was no longer solely to become a chartered accountant working in banks or big corporations, but to use the knowledge as a means to an end.
As a child, he had passion for agriculture, having been involved in subsistence farming along with his parents and was said to have developed so much interest in farming that no matter how much academic certifi cate he obtains, he would still be a big farmer. “When we were still young, I did subsistence farming, planting maize and some other things just to sustain the family and since then, I used to tell myself that I will do my own farming the way the Oyinbos (Europeans) do their own farming,” he recounts in an encounter with Business Courage.
To some extent, Abdulazeez now seem to be living his dream as he is fully into agriculture, after a brief spell in the corporate world.
A trained accountant, Abdulazeez started his working career as account clerk with Micom Cables and Wires Ltd in 1997. After completing his ATS 1 and 2 examinations, he joined Dohagro Allied Ltd, a rice and sugar distributing company, as an account offi cer and worked there for just six months. Thereafter, he joined Wale Adeleke & Co (Chartered Accountants), an auditing fi rm, as an audit trainee between 1998 and 1999, but the urge to be his own boss made him to resign his appointment.
After leaving Wale Adeleke &Co, Abdulazeez, along with his wife, decided to run a Nursery and Primary School from a rented apartment but shortly thereafter, he decided to further his education and left the school project under his wife’s care.
However, few months after the school started, the property owner issued a quit notice and as he narrated to Business Courage, “We left almost in tears and had to inform the parents of the pupils that had already registered with the school that we could no longer continue with the running of the school.” That abruptly ended his dream of being an entrepreneur.
Somehow, Abdulazeez found himself moving back into the labour market as he later joined Samcas Oil Mill, a palm kernel oil manufacturing fi rm in 2000. Again, six months after, he was out of Samcas, and returned to the school project, but this time, in his own house at Ewupe Ijaniye Village, Sango Otta, Ogun State.
Incidentally, the journey into his dream job of being a big time farmer started when he fi nally moved into his house in 2003. “Being a new site, we started seeing snails here and there, and I started picking them. So, I decided to check the articles on snail farming I had been keeping and in one of the articles, I came across the name of one man Mr. Bright. I traced him and attended some of his seminars. After I came back from the trainings, I did my own research and started my own farms. As God would have it, everything started fl ourishing,” he recounted in an interview with Business Courage.
Luckily for him, market for his snails was never a problem as there were ready-made markets. However, an awry experience he had with a customer who deposited some money for the snails but couldn’t get his order on the appointed date spurred him into thinking about how to enlarge the scope of the business. “The experience I had when I had just started made me to have a rethink. Then, we didn’t have enough space, but somebody deposited some money for me to supply some snails but somehow, I was unable to meet the demand. When the man came, he started shouting on me, making a lot of noise and threatening me. That experience put more pressure on us to do everything that was needed to be done in order to make sure that we are able to meet up with supply,” he said.
Abdulazeez believes that snails are not something you have to beg people to buy, stressing that, once you have it, you just have to have rest of mind. Besides, according to him the demand for snail is usually higher than the supply thus making the market potential of snail inexhaustible locally and internationally.
To him, snail farming has been adjudged to be most lucrative farming venture presently with far less capital investment and bountiful returns. It has lower risk compared to other livestock farming, while virtually every part of snail is of vital use in food, pharmaceutical, manufacturing and fi shing industries, noting that snail is an export commodity, which has value next to gold in overseas countries.
Snail farming requires small capital, and for a start-up capital of about N100,000, Abdulazeez believes one can generate up to N1 million in just one year. “You can conveniently earn income a thousand fold higher than your present earnings. You can keep your present job and do this on part time since it doesn’t require much time. This is a real export market that earns foreign revenue without you running from pillar to post. This is not fi ction but factual. Not imaginary but a reality. No stress, no time consuming, no odour, no noise and no irritation,” he said.
With as little as N50, 000, he says one can go into snail business but noted that it requires training. The need for training, he said, stems from the fact that, though there are snails around available to be picked, they (the snails) have species. “Many people see snails here and there. Some people take it as meat. But quite a number don’t know how to go about rearing them. This is made worse because snails, which belong to the family of animal called Mollusca, is a hermaphrodite. It has both the female and male sexual organs; so one cannot really distinguish between the male and female specie of it,” he explained.
In Nigeria, he said, there are about 17 species, but only three of them; Ashatina Mulica, Ashatina Ashatina and Ashatina Maginata are very profi table for business.
To the Thy Snail farm boss, many of those into snail farming business are mostly unwilling to let others know about the farming methodology. He regretted that the techniques are often shrouded in secrecy but noted that, snail farming is as easy as ABC, stressing that the only thing the snails may constantly demand for is attention and care. “They hardly fall sick. You don’t have to buy their food and you may not have to spend much to create an abode for them. The beauty of it all is that, the snails reproduce rapidly. They are capable of producing hundreds of eggs, which hatch into snails. It is now possible to produce one million snails worth more than N5 million twice a year. This, he said are made possible because of the availability of very highly prolifi c Achatina Achatina species of snails, which lay 200-400 in one batch 2-3 times a year.”
Still yearning for deeper entrepreneurial deftness, Abudlazeez is also involved in grass cutter raring business. Like he did when he started the snail business, Abdulazeez said he went as far as Ghana, Republic of Benin and Ivory Coast to see how they set up standard grass cutter farms.
Grass cutter (a rodent family), like many rodent species, he noted, have been and continued to be a delicacy in a number of countries, in Latin America, Africa and Asia where markets exist for a wide variety of rodent species and grass cutters are often preferred over other sources of meat. The vast majority of these animals are still gathered from the wild and several species have been hunted so extensively that they are now extinct. And this, he said, offers small-scale farmers, investors, businessmen and all those with wealth-mind set, an economic incentive for raising grass cutters in captivity.
According to him, the business of grass cutter farming is very lucrative as well. This is because, while they can easily be reared at home, they command a very good selling price as a family made up of fi ve grass cutters is sold for N30,000 or more. “A serious and dedicated farmer can have close to 200 families at a time” he said.
Today, apart from the grass cutters farm which he has at his residence, there are other farms he owns at Ikorodu, Abeokuta, Lagos, and some other places.
Not just contented with his snails and grass cutter farming business, Abdulazeez has also established a consulting fi rm called, Thy Consulting, which he said was his contribution towards impacting positively on the society. “While the business continued to fl ourish, most people started coming to me. And I am a kind of person that loves impacting knowledge on people. I don’t like hiding knowledge, so I started consulting, training people. As at today, we have trained more than 2,000 people across Nigeria. When people come for training, we expose them to all the species and the advantages of the species,” he said.
With N25, 000 per person, Abdulazeez trains more and more people on a weekly basis at his farm as he has written a manual titled “The Beauty of Snail Farming”, and also produced a VCD on Practical Commercial Snail Breeding, to enable them know all the techniques and secrets of commercial snail farming.
Presently, aside Thy Snail & Grass cutter Farms, he also has in his kitty, The Thy Agro Allied Enterprises for beekeeping and honey business. He also has the Thy Global Investment Ltd for snail and commodities from Nig
Source: nationalmirroronline.net/new/a-mid-size-agro-entrepreneur/
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