Fadumo is the founder of Astur Hijabs, a Somali brand that sells locally made, modest, comfortable, and chic Hijabs. Faduma started her business after she joined and completed The Next Economy program implemented by SIMAD iLab, where she successfully finished the Entrepreneurship and incubation phases of the program.

Faduma Liban Ahmed, a graduate of SIMAD University, is the founder of Astur Hijabs, a Somali brand that offers locally made, modest, comfortable, and chic hijabs. Faduma started this business after she joined SIMAD iLab, where she took entrepreneurship skills.  She won the Best Start-up Idea, and after two months, she finally launched her business, which is working now.

“I heard about SIMAD iLab in the last days of my university studies when my best friend, Nasra, saw the call to the application that the hub posted on their social media, and she shared with me to apply together.”

Fortunately, Faduma got an opportunity to join SIMAD iLab, and she took the core life skills. She joined the entrepreneurship track, where she gained the necessary skills to sharpen her skills and get the basic knowledge of entrepreneurship and business. She was part of the Batch 2 cohort.

Without that training, Ms. Faduma believes she would have never reached where she is today. That training was the core of her business; it helped her embrace her passion, define her business idea, her customer, competitors, the market, marketing strategy, and finance, and lastly, pitch her business clearly and in a short time. Again, without that training, she believes that she would have never been where she is today, and she ends up recommending everyone in business or even just starting a business to join SIMAD iLab and take that core life skills.

The skills that Ms. Faduma gained from the TNE program she used to apply to her business directly where the entrepreneurship or the incubation period; for example, in her incubation period, she took cost calculation; and when she learned how to calculate her costs and price effectively, it saved her from incurring unnecessary costs.

“We believe that our company (Astur) will be one of the elite local brands that are Somali owned brand and replace being fully dependent on external factories like (China and Turkey).”

Being a female entrepreneur who does not have fashion skills (sketching and sewing skills) was not an easy journey, but now Faduma is a fashion designer. Now Faduma and her partner opened their own store/boutique, and they are producing their products by themselves without outsourcing anymore.

Faduma and her partner also hired a seamstress (ladies with sewing skills) as a job creation opportunity for ladies and visioning to be a sewing store for ladies only to help them increase their production.

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