Armed with big ideas and technology, youth under 25 are successfully running their own companies.
When they talk or walk by, they arouse caution. Kenya’s youth, widely depicted as unruly and often impatient, are a feared lot. And why not?
Almost everyone – from teachers to politicians and religious leaders to the media – feels compelled to give direction to the so-called Generation Y. They have even been christened the “lost generation,” having been raised on cereals, before they learnt to play video games and spend hours on the internet downloading music.
Most of those born in the 1980s grew up with computers and those of the 90s find it hard to imagine life without the internet or mobile phone. As a chief executive officer, you will certainly spend sleepless nights wondering how to absorb such people into your company.
As the entrepreneurial bug defies age, a new worry for managers is emerging, and it’s positive: how to compete with and embrace the young, restless but creative minds. These 20-somethings and even teenagers, in their oversized jeans and “strange” mannerisms like hairstyle, are starting their own companies, swaying a good number of consumers with often fascinating ideas.
Dismissing this generation, it turns out, could be counterproductive. Take Mr Oscar Kimani, 23, who is the CEO of TransTech Investment Ltd, an e-business services firm he set up in 2007. Mr Kimani says he was sent away by a bank when he tried to open a bank account for the company. “I was accused of running a pyramid scheme, since, according to them, there was no way a 20 year-old could have a registered company,” he says.
As everybody worries about what to do with this generation, most of them in either high school, college or university are busy in their dormitories and hostels creating companies or dreaming fancy ideas. Perhaps they are inspired by class-to-grace stories of the likes of Microsoft founder and chairman, Bill Gates, Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin and, more recently, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook.
Kenya’s Generation Y is indeed restless. Mr Kimani registered TransTech while still studying accounts at Strathmore Business School and working part time at FedEx. Besides, he sold ladies clothes. Unlike the older generation who spend days on end drafting business plans and making proposals for financing punctuated with corporate jargon like leveraging and gearing, the young breed of entrepreneurs is very idealistic, carefree and fearless about technology.
Mr Kimani opened the e-business with neither a computer nor formal training computer applications and had to look for the clients, equipment and expertise later. “Actually, unlike many of my agemates,” he says, “I was straight from the village and my first contact with computers was at Strathmore. I got an interest in how it works and I had to train myself how to use it before I could write a business plan.”
He says the internet aspect was particularly fascinating and as he learnt, he got interested in how he could make money out of it. “I just needed someone to get the technical stuff done.” “I may not have the technical training in technology, but I see opportunities that can be exploited using technology,” says Mr Kimani who also owns Unique Africa Safaris, a travel company that uses the power of technology to promote domestic and external tourism.
This company was born out of the national business plan competition, “Chora Bizna,” he participated in 2007. Chora Bizna loosely translates to “write a business” plan. When the business took off much later, he immediately clinched a Sh1 million deal.
The perception society has about young people is somewhat mixed when they deal with them either as employees or clients. Successful entrepreneurs say young people should take one step at a time and venture into business after enough grounding by working for other businesses.
“Some of us started in similar situations,” says Mr Aruni Devani, the managing director and founder of Synresins Ltd, who started his synthetic resins company at the age of 26. “I had one year experience working with a big company and I regretted why I dint take two or three years.”
This kind of hand-on experience is important because, he said, it builds confidence and inculcates business ethics like honest and team work. Mentorship and training alone are not enough, according to Mr Devani, who holds that experience is the best teacher.
“Listening absorbs only 40 per cent and reading about 50 to 60 per cent,” said Mr Devani, a former chairman of the Kenya Association of Manufacturers. “But when someone does something, they absorb 90 per cent.” After managing to buy his first computer for TransTech Ltd and finally putting together a business plan, Mr Kimani got two deals to design a website for Sh58,000 and the next one for Sh80,000.
“While that would have been the moment to relish in my business life, trouble had just set in,” says Mr Kimani. The web designers he had hired to do the work for a 40 per cent share of the contract’s worth disappeared soon after he paid them before doing the job, leaving him to deal with the client.
“It was so hard to deal with the customer, trying to convince them that I was not just another young guy trying to con them. At the beginning of the business, I learnt a valuable lesson, that building a relationship with your clients is more important than the money.”
This is where Mr Devani says trust and integrity count – virtues that locks out most young people from big deals. “A business must develop confidence and reliability,” he says, “because business is not about transactions but it’s a partnership. At 25 or below, it’s not easy to get good lawyers and financiers and that’s why working for two or three years is good to develop your network.”
As an advantage, the young CEOs have age on their side and plenty of time to make mistakes, learn and move on to the next level of the business. “Often they try to reinvent the wheel, which disrupts things and makes them scary. Having energy and vision doesn’t set up a business,” says Mr Devani.
Bank manager dreams big
At only 18, Brian Waweru is the founder and CEO of a school bank, GigaVault, a student-run-business at the African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he is studying. GigaVault is a model business that runs like any other normal commercial bank. It runs a cash service that disburses the school’s grants to all students.
The bank has developed an online system where students can request for money or even make purchases online. It also runs a cashless system on campus where other students who run businesses can sell to their colleagues and have the money spent on purchases deducted from their grant without physically handling the money. It then charges the respective businesses for using this “cashless purchases service”.
