You can now register your company online

Mr Harrison Karanja. Photo/COURTESY

Young entrepreneurs are finding a niche in integrating law and technology to make a kill in the un-exploited e-government initiatives.

After the successful digitalisation of the Laws of Kenya, Mr Harrison Karanja, a co-founder of SoftLaw Limited, has launched the FormAKenyanCompany.com (FKC) in which one can register a company online.

“The practice around the world is to convert government functions which are centralised, paper-based, and involve a large amount of record-keeping and documentation into electronic work-flow systems like the FKC concept.

I’ve already done it with the Laws of Kenya and that has made an incredible impact on how legal services are now provided,” says Mr Karanja.

Registering a company in Kenya can be very tedious and usually flawed with bureaucratic processes that involve several trips between different government departments and filing in of many statutory forms.

The opaque process also opens up avenues for bribes to speed it up. This means that individuals looking to incorporate their companies will usually incur extra fees, long delays, and the frustrations that come with it.

To lessen the difficulties involved in forming a company, most individuals will seek professional help, which unfortunately will come hand in hand with higher fees. “A person wishing to incorporate a company in Kenya will spend a minimum of about Sh25,000 and up to Sh100,000 and take up to 30 days to receive their business certificate.

These conditions are a significant hurdle for start-ups and entrepreneurs short on cash and time and who want to inexpensively and efficiently formalise their business operations,” he says.
FormAKenyanCompany.com allows people to access all the documents required to register a company online.

In the website, one needs to fill the online forms and then leave the rest to Mr Karanja.

He says the portal makes the process interactive and transparent to the customer and in addition, the use of the M-PESA payment system and courier services allow FKC to efficiently process payments from all corners of Kenya with little inconvenience for out of town clients.

It costs about Sh15,000 to register a company through this service and seven days for the process.

Online workflow

In addition to helping individuals set up their companies, Mr Karanja says the portal provides online workflow management systems (extranets) and clerical assistance for law firms that wish to automate their own company formation processes.

Harrison Karanja had earlier pioneered the concept of business centres for start-up companies through Genius Executive Centre (GEC) in 2005 and also set up e-government service for the Laws of Kenya online in 2004. He hopes that by making it easier for small businesses to formalise, they can positively contribute to the growth of the economy.

In 2005 SoftLaw licensed its specially formatted Laws of Kenya data to the Judiciary through the National Council for Law Reporting and to a legal publishing house.

Backed by strong public demand, SoftLaw launched LawsofKenya.com — an online version of the Laws of Kenya — on December 11, 2004. LawsofKenya.com was an instant success.
In 2006 more services were added to the Genius Executive Centre - software development, transcription, language editing and training to its stable.

Members of the centre are given work stations, telephone extensions, shared services, including a receptionist, a reception area, two meeting rooms, a board room, cleaning services, messenger services, a post office box and IT support among others.

Realising the idle capacity of Genius Executive Centre at night, SoftLaw converted it into a business processing outsourcing centre under its Genius Outsourcing division. 

Case study

GEC was made the subject of a case study by Strathmore Business School in conjunction with IESE University. It is also a participating member in the Intellectual Property segment of an Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Intellectual Property training programme by the World Bank.

The centre also offers free business consultancy and advisory services to its members.

Mr Karanja is a lawyer and also trained on information technology.