For most people, getting started in entrepreneurship often starts with come up with a business idea and then pursue it in parallel until it stalls. Only a brave few go all out to test the waters of entrepreneurship. Affiong Williams is one of those rare people who gave it their all. And over the past decade, the “fruit selling” business she founded has not only flourished, but also managed to raise funds to drive its global expansion.
His childhood and early career
Affiong Williams was born on March 9, 1986. She completed a first degree in physiology and psychology with the intention of entering medical school afterwards to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor.
But by the time she graduated, she had already lost interest in medicine and wanted the opportunity to explore other career paths. She earned a postgraduate degree in business administration from Wits Business School in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2006, hoping it would open her up to other career opportunities.
Williams got her first job with an entrepreneurship support organization that supports SMEs in developing markets – Endeavor South Africa – and began interacting with entrepreneurs frequently. After four years of collaborating and secretly admiring entrepreneurs and everything they stood for, Affiong was ready to go.
How she started Reel Fruits
When Affiong Williams decided to become an entrepreneur, she knew the business had to focus on value-added agribusiness and started considering different ideas. The first plan was to produce fruit juice as a means of reducing post-harvest losses for fruit growers. However, Affiong knew she could not afford to build a fruit juice factory when the business started. Thus, dried fruit processing emerged as an alternative business idea that could also help achieve the same goal. As a dried fruit snack, the product also did not require electricity to keep it, which meant that the problem in the Nigerian sector would not be an issue.
- “I was living in South Africa at the time, and dried fruit was very popular there. I thought I could be the first to bring it to Nigeria and make it big. Yes, it was daring, but I didn’t know much. If I had done a little more research, I probably would have given up on the idea. I was just convinced that Nigerians were much more open to different tastes, judging by the variety of things that were imported back then. I believed that all I had to do was create awareness and demand,” she says.
She grew up and came to Nigeria to start the fruit business in 2012. One of the encouragements for her comeback was a £10million grant which she applied for and was selected for the first round. Unfortunately, shortly after arriving in Nigeria, she received a rejection letter shattering her hopes of receiving a grant.
- “It was an extremely difficult time because not only was I doing something new, but I was also filled with a lot of doubts. I thought I had made the biggest mistake of my life, but, of course, I couldn’t stop so soon. she will say later.
As part of market research, Affiong started selling dried fruits she had brought from South Africa. Even though the products didn’t have the prettiest packaging, the feedback was encouraging, and Affiong began producing more in her apartment. It was only a matter of time before Reel Fruit ran into the kind of trouble every entrepreneur longs for. Products were selling out quickly and demand was growing even faster, so much so that it was impossible to meet the demand from his small apartment.
She secured the first angel investor and funneled the funds into getting office space, a small van, and having more hands in the business. It took about five years of operation before Reel Fruit got the funds to set up a real factory with the right machinery. Until then, the company relied on third-party growers all the way to Ghana and did little processing.
A Different Fundraiser
Like most startups, Williams tried to raise money for the business, but things didn’t seem to add up. The dried fruit business was an uncharted field in Nigeria, and investors were unsure of its evolution, especially given the percentage of businesses that fail in the first five years.
When it became clear that a big fundraiser was going to be difficult to raise, the CEO of Reel Fruit took a different approach and started raising small capital from investors to prove his concept.
- “Because we failed to raise a big round, it became clear that people didn’t believe in the big picture. So when we said we were going to grow by x amount, they found it easier to believe that we could, for example, double our sales, hire more people, open new locations or launch more products. This story was much more relevant to investors,” Williams recounted in an interview.
In this way, the company gained the confidence of investors and was able to achieve one step at a time, depending on the funds raised for this purpose. That way, when the time came to raise more funds, investors were confident they were putting their money into a company that had a proven track record in smaller steps. It would take 9 years of operation before the company would finally increase its Series A.
- “Because we pioneered the dried fruit market in Nigeria, it took the first five years of our business to prove that this was not an instant product. When you combine that with all the other challenges of fundraising in Nigeria, it’s easy to see why it took so long. But I’m delighted with the result” said Williams.
Reel Fruits retails a range of dried fruit and nut snacks through a variety of channels, including over 700 stores, airlines, schools, hotels and export sales through Amazon.com. Affiong manages a team of over 80 staff across 3 regional offices in Nigeria and has created jobs for 50 rural women trained in growing premium mangoes for export in Kaduna.
In September 2021, ReelFruit closed its Series A fundraising of $3 million to increase its production capacity by 5 times to meet growing demand. The company is now focused on expanding its customer base outside of Nigeria, working with more farmers to mop up excess fruit and reduce waste in different parts of Nigeria, and earning its place as a market leader in this space.
“For the next decade, we are working to diversify our clientele. So while people know us as a consumer brand, which we will continue to be, we want to process a lot more inputs for large manufacturers, like the baking industry, and we also want to focus on export. Those two segments are where we think a lot of our growth will come from, and that’s where we’re going to focus on building capacity to do that.”
Awards and Recognition
You don’t have to be a serial entrepreneur before the recognitions roll in. Starting and building an international brand from a one-bedroom space in Yaba requires courage and abilities that go beyond the usual.
She has been invited to several forums on agribusiness, investment and trade, including the first intra-African trade fair, Cairo 2018, where she was a panelist. She was a finalist in Strive Masiyiwa Go Gettaz Accra Initiative, 2019; the AFDB Africa Investment Forum Market Days Entrepreneurial Venture Showcase. Johannesburg, 2019; and AFDB African Youth Agripreneur and Agripitch Forum, CapeTown, 2019.
She won the Village Capital Agriculture Accelerator, Kenya, 2020. In 2022, Affiong Williams was named the first winner of the prestigious Veuve Clicquot Bold Woman Award.
Affiong is passionate about entrepreneurship, agriculture and politics and is an avid runner, completing over 15 marathons and raising money for charity. His number one advice to future entrepreneurs is to seek knowledge.
- “Mistakes cost time and money, looking for more experienced people to help you avoid mistakes is sometimes worth more than the money.”