Opportunities don’t always come at the most favourable time in life. And sometimes, crises bring out the most innovative ideas in us. When Covid-19 struck months ago, it plunged the world in deep uncertainty that was characterised by a drop in business revenues. People have been stripped of their sources of livelihood. But for a few entrepreneurs, the tough Covid-19 times have come with new opportunities that have seen them establish ventures that are set to outlive the pandemic.
In this week’s pullout, we sample three agribusinesses that started during the pandemic and are on a promising journey of success.
From catering to fresh produce, the story of Palde Fresh Groceries
Pauline Kinjah had a thriving catering business until March 13 when President Uhuru Kenyatta banned all social gatherings and all her clients immediately cancelled all the events that she had lined up.
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Kinjah had three staff members who she didn’t want to let go. They told her that they had nowhere to go and that their families would starve if she dismissed them. She had to think fast.
“Covid-19 and the cancellation of my catering events was a big blow not just to me but to all my staff. In all the confusion, I sat my staff down and asked them whether they were willing to try something different with me and they all jumped at the idea,” says Kinjah.
What came to her business-oriented mind was dealing in groceries.
“Fresh groceries was the closest idea to catering and I knew I would easily use my online clients to transition to my new venture since we had already built trust in the food business,” she says, adding, “And I had a truck from my old business which came in handy.”
With Sh70, 000 from her savings, Kinjah travelled to Nakuru and bought 20 bags of potatoes, 200 kilos of green peas, cabbages and carrots. She came back to Nairobi’s Wangige and Marikiti markets and spent another Sh30, 000 on tomatoes, sukuma wiki and other vegetables, herbs and spices.
She then created a Facebook page under the name Palde Farm Fresh and started by taking orders from her online clients. But when her neighbours started buying from her, she converted the boot of her car into a stall and packed it outside the gate at her Lang’ata home from where she sold various kinds of cereals and flour, vegetables, herbs and spices. She had also expanded her business to selling kienyeji chicken and broilers.
All was well until other stall operators who dealt in groceries nearby started accusing her of snatching away their customers.
“I tried to ignore the accusations until one morning I came from the market to find a car packed in the very spot that I used to sell. This left me stranded with my groceries,” says Kinjah.
Right across her home, was a rusty shop which hadn’t been occupied for four years and the owner wouldn’t let it out to people who expressed interest in it. After a lot of convincing, Kinjah and the shop owner struck a deal and she embarked on renovating it.
With a permanent physical location, Palde Farm Fresh Groceries has become bigger than the Covid-19 project that Kinjah started to stay afloat.
“When I started Palde Farm Fresh Produce, I didn’t see it past corona virus. To me, it was just a project to keep me engaged and to sustain my employees. But now, I don’t intend to drop selling groceries,” she says, adding: “I plan to integrate groceries in my catering business should we go back to holding social gatherings and events. I also plan to grow my grocery store to supplying bigger stores.”
The pandemic has also taught the Nairobi resident a lesson: “I thought I had it all in events. But things took a swift negative turn and I learnt that with food, you can never go wrong. Locked in their houses or not, people will always want to eat.”
The massive turnaround at Anek Enterprises
Ephantus Kariithi has been in agribusiness for the past 15 years but has never seen more rewarding days until he unveiled Goodbox, a technology that allows him to deliver assorted vegetables to all his clients all over the country.
Since 2007, Mr Kariithi has tried everything that one could ever think about in Agriculture. From his one-acre demo farm in Nanyuki, he has greenhouses and runs drip irrigation, aquaponics, hydroponics and even does water harvesting using dam liners.
He keeps pigs and runs an aquarium, a poultry farm, cattle and demonstrates, during farm visits, how to maximize output from small spaces to novices in urban farming. There is also a propagation house where the Nanyuki farmer prepares healthy seedlings for many kinds of crops. Operating in Thika, Malindi, Nanyuki and with a presence in Uganda, Anek Enterprises also has hundreds of outsourced farmers and runs an academy for novices in farmers.
Additionally, he supplies organic produce to leading stores and runs a restaurant where he prepares dishes to Nanyuki residents.
Kariithi saw an opportunity in the supply of fresh vegetables when Covid-19 struck, sending fear among people who tried as much as possible to avoid contact with market produce.
“I thought that mama mboga was one of the feared points of contact and spread of the virus. The more the farm produce changes hands from the farm to the consumer, the more exposed to the virus it is. I wanted to eliminate as many points of contact as possible and to have farm produce reaching the consumer directly,” says Kariithi.
To test the waters, he prepared baskets of assorted vegetables and gave them for free to his neighbours and friends. Each basket has a cabbage, carrots, sukuma wiki, lettuce, broccoli, tomatoes, chives, dhania and many other herbs and spices. Today, each Goodbox with all these assortments costs Sh1, 500.
Kariithi has improvised a cold storage facility from an old truck that keeps vegetables below 6 degrees. Here, they can stay fresh for about a week while he makes deliveries. For the fish, he has a bought a freezer and only fries fish that has been ordered.
His business thrives on two things: high levels of hygiene and unique products. It is his main advice to people looking to try delivery of groceries.
“Observe high levels of hygiene. Also, try not to deliver things that people can easily find on the market. Deliver valuable food items such as lettuce and yellow and red capsicum. It isn’t easy to find these in the market,” he says.
Not many people are willing to pay the premium price and Kariithi now has a very specific target market which includes gated community households.
He adds: “Again, the idea of home deliveries is only picking up in Kenya. In other countries, it is the order of the day. Here, people prefer going to the market to catch up with their friends. Shopping in the African context serves the social function as well.”
From taxi business to designing chicken incubators
Teddy Maingi is an Uber driver whose car plies different places in Nairobi. Before Covid-19, Maingi took home up to Sh4, 000. Today, however, the taxi driver hardly makes Sh500.
“Covid-19 came with tough directives and many people are now working from home, leaving the taxi business with few clients. There are days that I make just about Sh300 and it is tough given that I used to make thousands of shillings before the virus,” says Maingi.
To make use of free time spent in the house away from the unrewarding taxi business, Maingi has been working on a chicken incubator and an accompanying fabricated egg turner for small holder poultry farmers. His motivation, he says, is to come up with a venture that will bring in extra cash as he waits fot normalcy to resume on the roads.
“This pandemic has taught me the importance of having alternative source of income. If my innovation works, I will be able to design chicken incubators for small-scale poultry farmers and make money from it. It will be my alternative source of income,” he says.
An online search found that a 1, 500-egg incubator costs Sh110,000. But with just Sh735, Maingi has been able to design an incubator using locally available materials. These include a digital thermometer to measure the temperature at Sh220, and foil papers at Sh100. Other items such as a bulb, a plug, bulb holder, sawdust and a carton box cost less than Sh100 each.
When he spoke to Smart Harvest, Maingi had already started the 21-day incubation after a week of trying to achieve optimum temperature in the incubator.
“I will be doing candling every six days to monitor the formation of the embryo,” he said, adding that his innovation was still in the experimental stage and he would only hit the market once he was sure that it worked.
The innovator has also come up with an automated egg turner using an old cooler box and an electric motor which will rotate the eggs in the fabricated incubator to prevent the yolk from settling on one side of the egg and to exercise the embryo.
