By Prudence Minayo
Moses Ndura is an entrepreneur making good money from selling containers. He founded Containers World Kenya Limited after numerous challenges. Having tried different hustles, he was able to find a niche by selling containers and container homes to Kenyans.
This is his story as told by WoK.
Life after school
After graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in 2012, he secured an internship in the digital media space. During this time, digital media was not as popular as it is today. Nevertheless, it taught him a lot and also enabled him to travel to different places around the country.
After internship, he did not have a job and finances became a problem. Due to this misfortune, he was kicked out of his house because of rent arrears.
Back to his village
Forced to go back to his parents home in Kiambu, he helped with farm work. He wanted to go back to the city but he lacked money. One day, he decided to register a company. This was despite the fact that he had no money or business ideas.
Ndura used Kshh2,500 to register it. After this, he realized he could register companies for people in the village at a fee. He borrowed a laptop from a friend in the village and began conducting the business from his room.This enabled him raise enough money to go back to Nairobi.
New job
He got a job as a salesperson for Kopokopo. This is a company incorporated in 2012 to popularize lipa na Mpesa among small and medium sized businesses. When his contract ended after three months, he had managed to raise Ksh130,000.
The determined entrepreneur who had the burning ambition of having to a successful business then decided to go into digital marketing. His approach was to convince small business ventures to allow him market them on Facebook at Ksh2,500.
He bought a second hand laptop and found a small office space, where he paid Ksh8,000 monthly. Not only was it hard to convince prospective clients but competition from other people doing the same was stiff. His big break came when someone contracted him to advertise his containers.
The pay was set at Ksh10,000 for every successful sale. The containers were selling for Ksh300,000 each. Since he had experience with sales and digital marketing, he was able to earn a lot from this. He earned more than any of his other jobs.
Containers World Kenya
This encouraged him to get into the container selling business. After bringing the person who introduced him to containers and others on board, he began selling and fabricating containers according to the clients’ needs. This birthed the company Containers World Kenya.
Moses and his team also started converting the containers to houses. During a May 2017 feature on Kuza Biashara, it was revealed that at the time a one bedroom container house went for Ksh850,000 and that the business had an estimated annual turnover of Ksh500 million. They were also carrying out operations in other countries such as South Sudan, Tanzania,Uganda and Rwanda.
The company, which has over the years employed hundreds, has a vast client portfolio from the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, KENHA, Kenya Defense Forces to UNHCR.
