Mobile Phone Battery charging business

Posted by Felix Okoli on Saturday October 6, 2012 at 10:17:6:

There are a lot of growing small business in Nigeria, a country where govt's inefficiency in the supply of basic public amenities is allowing small businesses to thrive.

One of such thriving and new businesses is Mobile phone battery charging.

Can you imagine that in 2012, one can make money by just offering Nigerians the ability to recharge their phone batteries? Well this is the case in Africa's leading mobile market as more and more people embrace the GSM technology.

What this business requires:
- Power source: Generator, Inverter, Solar energy or alternative means of power
- Fuel and maintenance costs
- Office
- Book Keeping
- Charging points

How much can one make?
So how much can one make by simply offering a phone battery recharging service. From what I've learn, service providers make about N50($0.3) per phone and make around N1000($6.6) daily since they serve about 100 people.

This sort of business mostly thrives anywhere but mostly in places where there are a lot of people living. Nowadays, even people living in the village all have mobile phones

Substandard batteries are helping the business
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A good quality phone battery can actually last for 2 days and in most cases 3 but nowadays more Nigerians tend to charge their phones on a daily basis and this is simply because of the presence of low quality batteries which require more power for recharging.

Due to the high number of non-genuine and second hand batteries, more people tend to spend more time recharging their phone batteries than using their phones. So, as long as the power supply is still a major problem for govt, low quality batteries are in the market, this business would continue to thrive.

Summary
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This sort of business can be started with low capital and I don't think one should invest a large amount of money into it since govt policy and effectiveness in public services could improve within the next 10 years or less.