By Prudence Minayo
Many jobless youths in the country think that a successful business has to be capital intensive. While this may be true in some instances, a section of Kenyans are thriving with the little they have. Julius Mulei start up capital of Sh200 only. He has gone on to establish a successful fruit salad business that employees eight people.
Here is Mulei’s story as told by WoK.
Employment
In school, he pursued a course in automotive engineering and went on to work with a number of companies including Citi Hoppa. The job did not bring him satisfaction and one day after receiving his salary, which was delayed for two weeks, he paid his bills leaving him with a paltry Sh200. This was disheartening as he could not survive on Sh200 the whole month. He quit the job and boarded a bus to town, paying Sh50 as fare and remaining with Sh150.
Fruit Salad Business
Luckily, he passed via Marikiti and found mangoes being sold for Sh10 each and here a business idea was born. He bought mangoes worth Sh150 and sold them making a 100 per cent profit. The business picked up and sales were good until the mango season was over. The mangoes became expensive and of poor quality.
One of his customers told him of a shop that was vacant where he could sell fruits. The shop was going for Sh60,000 which he didn’t have.
He convinced the person in charge to allow him pay in instalment and that was how he began buying and packaging various fruits. By 2017, the business was supplying fruits to over 300 customers daily and his 8 employees would go home with at least Sh500 daily.
There are times he faced challenges with officials from the county government. However, he was determined never to give up since that was his only source of income and his employees also depended on him.
“Sometimes when I face so many challenges especially being harassed by ‘Kanjo’ (county council askaris), I feel like I want to close the shop and to something else away from them. But I ask myself, If I quit, where will these people go?” he was quoted by Capital FM then.
He advised jobless youths to start something with whatever little money they had rather than sitting down and waiting for jobs to locate them.