Multiple streams of income sets Embu trader on right path

Mbogo Njeru, 29, is an emerging successful entrepreneurs in Embu County with investments in transport, food and money lending industries.

He has a fleet of seven motorbikes, runs a butchery, a rice business and operates an informal money lending bureau, in addition to employing eight people. He credits his achievements to sheer hard work, purposeful saving, pouncing on available opportunities and taking risks.

Just five years ago, Mbogo was broke both financially and in spirit after he lost Sh200,000 to a con who had promised to help him get recruited into the military. To raise this amount, he had taken his savings, sold property and received contributions from his parents.

Penniless and bitter, Mbogo says he would have ended up a criminal were it not for his impressive bank savings records in previous years that enabled him get a Sh100,000 bank loan in 2009.

"Using the loan money I bought a motorbike worth Sh70,000 and started a butchery in Embu town using Sh30,000. I manned the butchery on my own and employed a rider for the motorbike who would pay me Sh300 every day," he says.

Within no time his businesses had picked up and six months later, he bought a second motorbike.

"The two motorbikes would generate Sh600 daily and I used this amount to offset the bank loan while saving proceeds from the butchery," he says.

Within one year he had cleared the loan and dedicated most of his earnings to savings such that by December 2011, he bought an eighth acre piece of land. In 2012 he bought his third motorcycle and due to improved liquidity started the money lending business, as well as ventured into rice selling which he sources direct from farms in Mwea, Kirinyaga County, and supplies to hotels.

He says anyone venturing into business must be willing to take both the good and the bad since this is the nature of entrepreneurship.

"I once lost a motorcycle and almost lost another after a rider fled with the motorcycle which I recovered three months later," he says.