Jacqueline Kithinji is the founder and CEO of MSL Yummy, a value addition company making dried onion flakes, onion powder, onion paste, onion pickles, onion juice and onion jam.
She went into onion farming after failing in chilly farming.
Although the first market was profitable, Kithinji went into value addition after flooding of onions from Tanzania which disrupted the market.
Here is her story as told by WoK.
When Kithinji ventured into agribusiness, she started off by planting chilly but as fate would have it, she was not successful.
However, despite the disappointment, she did not give up but instead leased a land and started planting onions.
Kithinji had a bumper harvest and pocket good money on her first market because it was not yet flooded.
By the time she had her second harvest, the market was flooded with onions from Tanzania which made the prices go low.
It was then when Kithinji decided to effect her idea of venturing into value addition.
“You would go to the market and they would tell you, we are now buying from Tanzania. I had thought of value addition before but I had not taken it up, I had not gotten the push,” she said.
She did a research and with the feedback that she got, she went on to make different products from onions.
“I did research and asked people if there was an onion product served in a different way would you go for it and they were like yeah, we are tied of tearing. It gave me the motivation,” Kithinji said.
Kithinji also enrolled for a training program on value addition at Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute (KIRDI).
“The training was a wake-up call, look at the economic growth for you and the community the shelf life of the product, job creation and the branding of the product,” she said.
Kithinji makes onion flakes, onion powder, onion paste, onion pickles, onion juice and onion jam.
She has two employees but when they are doing production the number is bigger.
Challenges
Kithinji also mentioned challenges that she has encountered in the course of running her small business.
She mentioned lack of proper starting capital and difficult access to loans as one of the major challenges that she has encountered in her business.
“Sometimes you find it’s not useful. When I am talking about production and you want to give me Ksh 200,000 or Ksh 150,000, that will not help me,” she said.
Other challenges include customers doubting the quality if her products which she attributes to lack of public awareness.
“People ask if you cut onions, are they not poisonous. But I tell them no, I have gone through standards
“After all the formulations I had to go through KIRDI, it’s not just something that you do in the house, it’s a product that we look into the international market,” she said.
Kithinji also has challenges in accessing the retailer market.
“You get a chance to enter the supermarkets the payment terms are challenging. I am an SME, if you keep my money for 90 days how am I supposed to do my production?” she added.
