Review of Pursue your dream or Move on

Pursue your dream or move on is the story of Sonia Headlee, Co-founder and CEO of Inganci
Tumatir a tomato paste company. She was facing a moral conundrum regarding the two choices
which could decide her future. Sonia and Amanda Ibrahim her college batch-mate together had
started Inganci Tumatir to improve the economic development of the Nigeria more importantly
to increase the local farmer’s yields by reducing the post-harvest loss which was around $900
million in gap for tomatoes. They had to sell their paste to a competitor due to the misspelling of
the label name. After some time Amanda left the company to join a London based firm and it
was all on Sonia. The infrastructure of Nigeria was poor with the addition of poor ease of doing
business. The government had a rigid protocols and stiff competition from Chinese imports and
underinvestment in the human capital. Sonia’s company was facing some tough times but she
was assured by the commissioner of agriculture in Kano Mr. Abdulsalam Sani who had been a
supporter of her business that the government was hiking prices on key foods to help the
domestic producers to compete with the Chinese products. Still Sonia’s company had a long way
to go with all the cobwebs still around the infrastructure, bureaucracy, cost of moving goods etc.
Sonia wondered if her company had what it takes which she had predicted on her spreadsheet.
She went for some advice from her business school friend Tendai Park who working in a firm
was called LFM. He had been urging Sonia to join his firm for a long time as the firm had become
a well know across the region and the offer was tempting for Sonia. The job entailed financial
security, nicer lifestyle, and even a chance to go back to USA once in while with a position to
influence the African agriculture on Grander scale. She was faced with the two choices to define
her future - the first one was to close down the business of her tomato paste company and
accept the job offer from LFM which gives her the Financial security and entails a comfortable
life with a chance to make a change in the economic development of the Africa and be there to
experience that change. The 2nd choice was to continue with her dream irrespective of the
hardship she faced as the company was her creation and she could participate in ground level
innovation which she could not do in LFM. What she could learn by making her company a
success will be not like anything else as giving up is easy but finishing it is the challenge. In this
way we come to know about the choices and their respective advantages.
What conclusion I could drive from this story is that Sonia could leave the lead role and assign it
someone else for a while so that she could join the firm LFM for some years where she could
gain some valuable experience and some earning which she could use for the company. A
change of scenario will help her to recollect her thoughts and will help her in coming back
stronger and charged with high motivation.

- Aravind Nair
Section -A (26021)