Florence Mogere: Kenyan Woman Who Started Business With KSh 10k Now Runs Multi-million Venture
- Florence Mogere started selling vegetables as a side hustle but ventured into the business fully after losing her job
- She started the company that she currently owns and operates under the brand names Frozen Isle and Nyota Limited in her kitchen
- Food processing company Nyota Limited specialises in pre-cooked frozen beans, speciality tomato lines, and frozen vegetables
TUKO.co.ke journalist Japhet Ruto brings over eight years of experience in financial, business, and technology reporting, offering deep insights into Kenyan and global economic trends.
Convenience was the driving force behind Florence Mogere’s frozen vegetable business.
Florence Mogere runs a frozen vegetable business. Photo: Frozen Isle.
Source: Facebook
At the height of her career, she was employed as an auditor for one of the largest construction corporations in East Africa.
She began selling veggies to offload excess inventory from her Ngong farm. Her two nannies would be occupied with the company while the kids were in school.
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Her coworkers would struggle to find time to cook the traditional vegetables that she would offer to them.
“I then suggested to them to pay my nannies to prepare and pre-cook the vegetables, freeze them, and deliver them in portions to reduce food loss. I had no plans of going commercial,” she told Business Daily.
After losing her job, she turned her side hustle into a full-time business.
“When you’re employed, you never know when you will be relieved of your job. I was lucky that I had already started working on this project,” the accountant said.
How Florence Moegere started Nyota Limited
She started the company that she currently owns and operates under the brand names Frozen Isle and Nyota Limited in her kitchen.
Food processing company Nyota Limited specialises in pre-cooked frozen beans, speciality tomato lines, and frozen vegetables.
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But it hasn’t always been easy for her on the business front.
She disclosed she had to deal with loans and fees after venturing into entrepreneurship and started with a meagre capital of KSh 10,000.
“I didn’t have capital. I started with my two nannies and our initial raw materials being two sacks of beans costing KSh 10,000, a deep freezer, big cooking pans, gas cylinders from my house, and vegetables from my farm. It felt like being thrown into deep waters,” she narrated.
Expanding Nyota Ltd
Mogere has gradually grown the company with the money she earns from her part-time consulting, audit jobs, and loans.
She clarified that to launch and grow a business, one does not necessarily need a large sum of money, but further funding would be required as it develops.
Access to official retail markets is one of the problems she faced.
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Negotiating with retail outlets and suppliers
She had to be tenacious and patient for almost a year before her items were placed on the shelves of Nairobi’s Carrefour, Naivas, and On The Go supermarkets.
Mogere negotiated a shorter credit period with the outlets because many suppliers wfacedlengthy payment periods from the retail outlets.
This allowed her to pay her raw material suppliers, primarily small-scale farmers, on time.
At first, Nyota could not handle 100 kg of food daily; today, it sources 15,000–20,000 kg of fresh vegetables each month from small-scale farmers. She employs 14 temporary workers and 18 full-time employees.
She expanded her frozen vegetable business by adopting specific corporate lessons such as discipline and sticking to goals.
In the world of business, she also made major blunders but learnt from them.
“For example, when rolling the indigenous vegetable line, I bought 15,000 pouches but later realised that they were not of the right size. I lost hundreds of thousands of shillings,” she revealed.
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How woman established cleaning company
In other news, Phanice Kwamboka is the founder of Malvo Cleaning Services, which serves homes and offices in Nairobi and other towns.
She started the business as a side hustle while working at a flower farm and resigned to focus on it a few months after its launch.
Kwamboka revealed that as her client base grew, she got referrals and secured a big contract in a private hospital.
Source: TUKO.co.ke
