Charity Mehara is a Chemical Engineering graduate from the Federal University of Technology Owerri. After completing her youth service, she embarked on a job search but found that the available job opportunities were not fulfilling for her. Her passion has always been to help people overcome challenges and make a living from it.

Charity’s business idea came about when she noticed a common challenge faced by working-class citizens, students, and aged parents. She observed that many people did not have ample time to go to the market to purchase groceries and food items. This usually makes them frustrated and unable to strike a balance on all fronts.

This led her to start STOCK-UP, a Lagos-based personal shopper service for food and groceries. STOCK-UP takes market lists, sources and sanitizes items, and delivers them to customers’ doorsteps.

To scale up her business and gain more knowledge on running a successful enterprise, Charity applied for the Entrepreneurship trajectory of The Next Economy Programme through FATE Foundation.

The programme provided valuable courses on marketing strategy, research, business plan formulation, digital marketing, value proposition, business registration, funding, and customer relationship management that made Charity scale her business.

Additionally, she received seed capital, which she used to acquire marketing materials and assets for her business.

Thanks to the knowledge and capital acquired through the Next Economy Program, STOCK-UP is making progress towards its goals of increasing its customer base and retaining 70% of her customers.

Though the business is still in its early stages, Charity is grateful to have the opportunity to solve problems for her customer and community and also earn a living through her business.

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