Female entrepreneurs to watch

There has never been a better time to be a Kenyan woman in business than now, what with all the support from both the government and financial institutions, there are many plans in place to see more women thrive in business. There is no shortage of brilliant women entrepreneurs exploiting these favourable conditions, and the government is walking the talk by giving women funds to grow their businesses through the Women Enterprise Fund and setting aside a quota of government tenders for special groups like women. As Kenya hosts the 6th Global Entrepreneurship Summit this weekend, we look at some of the women who have benefitted from the Women Enterprise Fund, who have used this financial support to take their businesses to higher heights.

Evelyne Akinyi Odongo is the CEO of Mefa Arts Centre and the owner of Akinyi Odongo Kenya, a high fashion brand. She also dresses First Lady Margaret Kenyatta.

Evelyne Odongo is a wife, a mother and entrepreneur. In a crowded fashion industry, she has managed to carve out a niche for herself. In fact, she is set to showcase her latest achievement, an international fashion brand at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2015 this weekend. What did she do different? What sets her apart?

“I focused on my designs and refused to get derailed by sideshows like seeking fame which can easily distract one in this industry,” she shares.

She comes off as polished and glamorous but her journey which started in Rang’ala, a small village in Nyanza hasn’t been a smooth one.

She registered her business Mefa Creations 10 years ago and has watched it grow slowly. Every time she steps out of her house, she makes sure that she is wearing her designs. She reckons that she needs to believe in her brand before other people can and this has worked for her. She gets direct feedback and through word of mouth, has watched her business grow and added big names to her client list. Last year, she had an opportunity to design for the First Lady Margaret Kenyatta who also in support of the textile industry graced a runway at Origin Africa by gracefully giving the first catwalk.

“It isn’t an easy industry, there isn’t structure, and financial institutions do not take one seriously. Sometimes it can be such a lonely place to be.”

For her, the success can partly be attributed to the fact that she has always been looking for challenges. Five years into her business, she expanded it to include a training centre where she coaches aspiring designers on everything from how to go about registration to where to source for fabric. She is aggressive. She doesn’t wait for things to happen to her. Two years ago, she took the initiative to go into government offices to get information on what opportunities for growth were available for her out there. She learnt that there was demand out there for the products that were produced here. She has worked with the Export Promotion Council, African Women Entrepreneurs Program, and Africa Cotton and Textile Industries Federation, to get her products out there. She stayed involved and this year, she is going international with a high-end fashion brand.

“We are at a good place. There is opportunity here. I believe that at this moment it is a great thing to be an African woman, especially in Kenya.”

Jackie Malomba is the owner of Parlisa Fitness Club. She is also an SME business liaison manager at a regional bank.

For that young person who just started working and is flirting with thoughts of quitting to start a business, Jackie’s advice is to slow down. Entrepreneurship is fulfilling, she says. But there are aspects of it that you can only learn from the workplace. There are things about it that you can’t learn from workshops. And she should know because she is both an employee and a successful entrepreneur.

By day, Jackie is a small and medium enterprise (SME) business liaison manager at a regional bank. She also owns Parlisa Group of Companies which include a gym and a laundry business.

“My business has been successful largely because I was able to put up working systems and processes that I learnt from employment,” she says.

Entrepreneurship was a longtime passion for her. She however only acted on it after two decades of working in a bank during which she had risen to top management. She felt that she had reached the glass ceiling and left her job with the intention to go back to school and to start a business.

“I had the option of using the benefits to pay off my mortgage but I instead took the risk of investing it in a business with the hope that it would pay off,” she says.

It has been four years running her business. She has made mistakes, lost money to unscrupulous employees but she has also learnt from those mistakes. She is also a member of the Kenya Association of Women Business Owners (KOWBA). The mentorship she has gotten from here, she says, is invaluable. Her clientele has grown and from her own lessons, she offers consultancy services to people seeking to put up fitness centres.

“I made the mistake of starting off with cheaper alternatives and when these machines started breaking down, I knew I had made a costly mistake. I help my clients source for machines, recruit their staff and make the process less painful than it was for me.”

When she graduated earlier this year, she went back to work. She was lucky to find an employer whose passion for empowering women is in line with hers. Her job and her business feed off each other. Her clients are mainly female entrepreneurs. She either teaches one or learns from them. She reckons that there are many working women with excellent entrepreneurial skills who are not bold enough to start.

“You can successfully do both. Do a job you love and grow leaders in the form of people you assign the day-to-day running of the business to.”

Judy Wambugu, 30, is the CEO of Safety Instructors and Planners Ltd.

Judy, a disaster preparedness expert believes that you can only defeat the enemy through strengthening the population through knowledge. Her company which specialises in training in disaster preparedness was founded on this belief.

“I dream of a world where everyone feels safe in their environment. Knowing that you have a plan in the event of a disaster enhances your peace of mind,” she says.

Her business started as an itch that refused to go away. When the American embassy was bombed in 1998, Judy was just 12 years old but she saw the chaos, the rubble and the helpless people. Even when she went on to pursue a career in business, these images stayed with her. She however, only found her true self when she lost herself in service to others.

“When I came back home from the UK after getting my master’s in disaster management, I was confident that I had a solution for Kenya. I however didn’t know how to go about it so I just took the well-paying jobs I got in administration,” she recalls.

Still, there was that burning desire to help. There were fires, buildings collapsing, road accidents and a rising number of terrorist attacks. When she wasn’t working, Judy started training school children in Kibera on disaster preparedness. She tried approaching a few people in the hope of getting funding but none were receptive.

“Kibera at the time was a generally hazardous environment. The fires kept happening but this time, they had a plan. They knew what to do, who to call and they managed to stay safe. This kept me going.”

Finally, in 2014, she felt ready to do it by herself and she founded her company. Safety and security is a predominantly male field in Kenya and it has taken her a lot of persistence and resilience to pull through. Most importantly, she took on a mentor to hold her hand through the initiation into entrepreneurship.

“I work alongside a team of experts in safety to give solutions pertaining to child safety, personal safety and institutional safety. The team assesses all the possible risks in buildings and situations and then gives advice on mitigation.”

This is for the smaller part of the population that can afford to pay for this. For the larger part that can’t afford it, Judy has been seeking like-minded people these past months to come up with a solution.

“Eventually, we hope that safety lessons can be embedded in the curriculum. If you teach a child what to do now, we will have an aware population in 10 years.”

Esther Kagiri is the managing director of Globe Track International, a media tracking company

When Esther Kagiri decided to start her own company six years ago, an automated media tracking system was a difficult idea to sell. It took her months to get someone to sit and listen to her, much less buy into her idea.

“I don’t like to fail. No one does. I however loved the challenge that came with the rejections. They fed my resilience,” she says.

She had been in public relations for 10 years. She’d continually had to wait to get reports from media trackers because of the slow system. Now, she had done her research and seen that the rest of the world had done away with the delays by using automated systems to track and record. Now, if only she could find someone to invest in her idea.

Armed with only the idea and a great deal of passion, she began knocking on doors. Finally, an acquaintance agreed to invest in her idea and she immediately went to work setting up the offices and importing the equipment. Barely two years in, in 2011, Esther received a state commendation in recognition of her role in ICT development.

“I now have a team of 26 and I think they have been my greatest gift on this journey. When you have people believe in you, you push yourself out of your comfort zone,” she says.

Her team ensures that their clients know what is being said about their brand out there and also that they have timely access to vital television clips which aid them in making informed decisions for their companies. In retrospect, Esther says that her desire for entrepreneurship was fanned by the fact that throughout her public relations career, she had female bosses. Seeing firsthand what they were doing with their lives strengthened her belief in herself.

“Being a successful entrepreneur was like a dream but now is the best time for a woman to be in business in Kenya. We have support from the government and also from financial institutions.”