Ciiru Waweru: Strengthening Africa's Problem-Solving Entrepreneurs

Inkonversation s02 ep 8

Ciiru Waweru Waithaka, serial creative entrepreneur and CEO of Anjiru, a Kenya based lifestyle brand, shares her entrepreneurial journey fueled by innovation, sustainability and investing in the next generation of problem solvers.

Transcript

Transcript 


Juddy 
00:15 Thank you so much Ciiru for making time to participate in our podcast today. My name is Juddy Waweru and I'll be your host. So in a World Economic Forum profile, you are described as a creative entrepreneur. How…? What does being a creative entrepreneur actually mean? 
Ciiru 
00:38 Thank you for the question. I think it's maybe on a lighter touch that we have to call ourselves something. Really everything in life is first designed and then made. Unfortunately, we are then categorized into science or otherwise. So we'll then add creative entrepreneur. Because that's what you get to see where it's about design, but everything in products that is made has to be designed first. So under creative serial entrepreneur, we design and make things. But sometimes you find you're not allowed to choose both, so we end up calling ourselves creative serial entrepreneurs. And as we speak more, you'll hear the many different things we do, and hence the word serial. 
Juddy 
01:25 Excellent. And you mind, sharing your learning, entrepreneurship? What inspired you to start your very first venture? 
Ciiru 
01:34 Absolutely none. I had just finished Uni and had no job, so sometimes it's as simple as that and everybody thinks a big thing hits your head and you are inspired. No, I'd finished university. I'm a graduate of interior architecture and I literally was out of campus now and a client at the time said, “look, if you've finished, can you do a project?” I was like, I guess I can. And they're like, OK, I was like, well, I've never done this, “But can you? Are you good at what you do?” I said I believe I am. And that began. I began my journey into entrepreneurship. I didn't have a business card. Nothing. All it took is somebody taking a gamble on me. And more importantly, me myself, being confident enough to say, let me try not knowing. I've never done a real life project. We've done them in university, but never a real life. And after that they say the rest is history. It became referrals, referrals, referrals, so that's… there was no inspiration. I'll be honest. It is. I had finished school. And somebody said, can you do? 
Sometimes we sit and wait for this inspiration thing and some…, and it's not always like that. 
Juddy
02:46 Yeah. Excellent. I think most of us have also found ourselves in such a journey at some point, and it's always actually an eye-opener, you know, trying to be your own employer. So we don't always have to look to get an employment. You can always employ yourself and employ others. 
So the brand Anjiru, could you kindly tell us briefly about it, and then what was your initial vision for this particular brand, and how has it evolved? 
Ciiru 
03:17 Great question again. Anjiru is an evolution of, I guess, who we are, who I am as a person. So when we started off, when I say we, as a team we were designing offices, hotels, restaurants, etcetera, a couple of years back. And then we put that on pause and started a brand called Fun kidz, which is what we're known for at the moment. And fun kids was designing the first children's brand out of Africa. We have the most number of children on the continent. Largest population growth. Yet we've never designed brands for children from Africa, from furniture to books to music, etcetera. And that's what we started Fun kidz for. And because our children were many, our schools don't have enough desks. Don't even have the dignity within schools, for example. So we set out to do that at first. Did that pretty well, growing it with all the challenges that come with it as well. 
And then the pandemic hit COVID 2019 and everything stopped. The factory closed. There was no one in schools, which is where our biggest customer base was. Student furniture became a luxury. It's not a must-have. We needed to survive, and we didn't want to be part of the, you know, the super spreading. So we actually had to close our doors of the factory. I was… Very, very dark time, not only for our business, but many, many other businesses as well globally. And we closed literally for nine months, not knowing what would happen to us. From a health perspective, many of us did know food survive or. Not. After nine months, we're still around and we said, you know what? We need to keep trying. At least there's still a bit of a heartbeat in us. And we reopen the factory, put on the doors, put on the lights. And we found waste in the corners and we said we're going to make product out of our waste. These people at home. Are working in the corporate world, especially who needed trays and everybody was, you know, confused and not having enough things around them at home. And we started making trays, the first product we did was a tray, very different from furniture we did and even my entire thing was like, why would we do this? And I thought because we need to survive. So Anjiru was born out of the survival. The need to survive and then thrive. 
So Anjiru is a brand about people. It's about the dignity of people and planet. No longer is it about wanting to be a big design house. We now incorporate design in what we do, but really, really now and made us go deeper in understanding. What do people need? Arm ourselves, our team, society around us and hence the brand Anjiru. Anjiru is one of the clans. On the Kikuyu clans, it's not about being Kikuyu, it's one of the clans that i actually come… I'm a Monjiru. I come from the Kikuyu clan called Anjiru. But it's about the dignity of people and planet with everything we do. Everything we design, conversations we have… Are we looking at what that does for people, the positive side of people? Are we proving lives genuinely. Or is this a tagline to say is it profit first or people first? So everything changed because of the pandemic and the brand became deeper, wider and truly more fulfilling for us. We're now brand Anjiru. 
Juddy 
06:35 Wow, I love that. I love the “survive and thrive” part of it. It's its quite interesting. And you do have a vision to shift mindset from being a small roadside trader or small roadside trading to bigger ventures. So, in your own experience, how can this transformation be achieved? 
Ciiru 
07:00 The first thing I'll say is. From being small trader to big is for example yourselves as clients. Now you're my clients as well. When bigger clients give smaller traders work, then the businesses growing. It's economies of scale. And I keep saying this about Africa and to be more specific, Kenya, we are a couple of years behind many. Not for reasons above our own, but others. And i won’t go into the history of Africa. However, if we then say I make a chair, and you buy one chair, it's OK. It's fantastic. But if you buy 100 chairs, I will go. If we stop looking at roadside traders as what we call, in Kenya, just Juwakali. And give them bigger orders than the one chair we buy and negotiate with them all the time, doing very well the cost of manufacturing in Africa is much higher than other parts in Africa. I mean, in the world, we take that small or perceived small trader to the next level by giving them a bigger order. They can get their raw material at a discount now because it's economies of scale backwards in the supply chains, and they can deliver. Many times people argue that our quality is not as good as maybe what comes from outside, and I politely smile back and say because we haven't been given the opportunity to prove ourselves. And give us grace to learn many manufacturing businesses globally have been in existence a long time. Now is when we're growing ours, and I believe in about a year's time, a lot of change will have come. If and only if small roadside traders are given bigger volume work to do improve, learn and grow. 
Juddy 
08:46 Wow. Ohh. Thank you. Thank you. That's really inspiring. It doesn't mean that because I'm trading on the roadside. I don't have the skills or the capacity. I mean, I have the skill I just don't have the capacity to be a, you know, perhaps do production in mass but… 
Ciiru 
Capacity yet. We keep saying yet. Because there's no need for me to sit with the team of 100 people if all you're making is one chair. But if I get an order of 100 chairs, 100,000 chairs, then we grow. We fit into the shoe, right? Yeah.
Juddy 
09:20 Interesting. And sometimes we do speak to successful entrepreneurs like yourself. We tend to center our discussions around ventures that are successful, right? So do you have any experience where… of business ventures that did not go as planned? 
Ciiru 
09:41 There is nothing that ever go as planned. Every day doesn't go as planned in the real world. Entrepreneurship, there's no plan. And I'm being honest. You wake up in the morning by afternoon shift, things shift. But one thing we must learn to do as entrepreneurs is be agile. We started off designing manufacturing furniture. OK, then Covid came, boom, we now do… I've just been taking clients around our garden. We now do things through the environment. Agility, because we didn't plan the pandemic, but it came and things changed. So the question is, what then happens to the team, the machines that made the children's furniture can still make adult furniture. So we found ourselves now coming back to doing offices and homes etcetera, so. Things constantly do not go as planned in entrepreneurship. The question is, can we be agile enough to sometimes the same day shape-shift as we call ourselves. We are shape-shifters. 
Juddy 
10:43 Nice and so from that statement. My next question is going to be what is your biggest lesson and I think one of it was “you have to learn how to be agile”. 
Ciiru 
100 percent 100%. 
Juddy 
Yeah. Any other learnings you've you've got from that? 
Ciiru 
11:04 Oh, trust each other. Trust yourselves. For me, it's trust. Trust is such a big thing we take for granted in entrepreneurship and also one thing I keep repeating the extended grace. For example, you could be sitting waiting for delivery to arrive on something you ordered from an entrepreneur, and it doesn't come on time and you start complaining that they run late. But if you actually extend grace and think maybe it's something that happened. Many times you find whether it's a kanjo, as we call it in Kenya, who stopped it. We call it arresting the truck. Many, many times, the ball is dropped, not by entrepreneurs. One thing, or sometimes it happens. It's not perfect. We're still a developing country. Many, many things happen behind the scenes. By time you get that final product, just extend grease to your suppliers because we will get better. We're not yet there. There is so much that goes on behind the scenes. By the time we sometimes power goes down the whole day, and you don't have money for a generator. And even if you did have that generator. Maybe that day you don't have money for fuel, and yet the client keeps calling because they need their order. And it's just unfortunately the way it is on the ground in a developing country like ours at the moment, but it will change. This is what we believe. 
Juddy 
12:26 Wow, thank you. And what you're philosophy of balancing risk and reward? 
Ciiru 
12:33 It's nothing like balance. Absolute no balance, life is a seesaw. Entrepreneurship is a seesaw. You have your ups and downs, so I don't even know what… sometimes I wonder if the reward is that I am positively contributing to the development of my country. It has to be sometimes as almost naive and romantic as that. The reward we hope to fill it one day, if not in my time, hopefully in my children's time. This is a long term gain. This is not risk and reward equal. No, this is an investment we're doing. This is a long haul. There's many, many days we want to throw in the towel. I was laughing with a friend of mine this morning. I was like, I don't know if I have it in me to continue. And they said if you give up, what about the rest? So the reward, we have to know is that Kenya is us and we are Kenya. Africa is us, we are Africa. And we must invest in her. Period. That for me is the reward at the end of the day. I can't quantify it because it's very, very challenging being entrepreneurs in Africa. But we must know that we must do this because there will be a better tomorrow and there can only be better tomorrow if we are part of making tomorrow better today. 
Juddy 
13:46 Thank you. Thank you for that. So I know you are a board director for the Kenya Association of Manufacturer who strategy in 2030 aims at prioritizing SMEs by boosting the business sectors contribution by about 20% and creating. 1,000,000 jobs. So by 2030 as Inkomoko, we will be in eight countries, which means in the serving more than half a million small businesses. So creating a positive impact for more than 7 million across the continent. So, this kind of bold goals, why is it so essential for private sector voice to be at the forefront to achieve success? 
Ciiru 
14:31 OK. And congratulations on your ambitious delivery, very ambitious goal. It's fantastic. I mean, private sector creates jobs, OK, and private sector is also the consumer of… 
People who make products… again i will speak on ourselves as manufacturers. Every single thing, every single thing, whether it's my… the phone I'm using, you know, i saw the beautiful curtains in your house. Everything is made by people. And that's by private sector. OK. Private sector is the one in business. And the more we make things… I'll speak on manufacturing here, making reference to KAM, is if we even look at a simple thing like the spoon in your house, a plate, a cup, a table, a chair… All those are manufactured. Made by people. So as long as the population is growing for as long as you guys are going to expand, thats population growth. The question is, of all the people you're gonna have under yourselves. The clothes, the shoes, everything they use. Who has made that? That is the role of private sector. So they'll be those who make and then those who consume. It's as simple as that one paragraph or a one-pager to show we must grow. Industries and private sector must be a part of it. Like yourselves, where you're both the consumer and also the enabler in terms of the amazing work you do with the women in the communities for them to build up skilled. So that businesses like myself for example, can also be an offtaker of the things they make. That is, I believe, the role of private sector. We also lobby a lot for policy change for improvement of policy. Government is not in the business of doing business, so we need to guide them, sit to them, which we do a lot, which is part of what we do as KAM. Constantly lobbying for policy change. I can't even begin to tell you how much and for how many years we've done this and this, we do as volunteers. Because it matters not only to our businesses but to businesses like ours, but also to the country and the region at large. 
Juddy 
16:38 And we all look up to people who inspire us, for example, other entrepreneurs, mentors or even family members. Do you have any influential figures who have guided or influenced your journey as an entrepreneur? 
Ciiru 
16:55 I'm very careful with that kind of category, or categorizing of people. I personally am influenced or inspired by everybody I come across. Who every day gets up with hope in them. For me that's inspiring. I get inspired by the teams we used to do our deliveries. From the boda guys to trucks who, especially in this season, I’ll just give an example where it’s pouring hard with rain, and we still need to get deliveries out there, and they do it without complaining. They are drenched, they get sick but they keep going because they need to. For me, that is resilient. That is great. That is the determination. All too often we look at what would be perceived as an influencer, or somebody has inspired us. For us, it is the people we work with every single day from different social circles. I have a team in my office in Lavington who are doing weaving and spinning of fabrics from silk to cotton. They inspire me because it's something they didn't know how to do a month ago. Within a month, they have learned without complaining, without saying we can't do this. We need to be in a school. They just doing it in a room every day, knowing that they also put food on the table for their family. I'm inspired by people who care enough for this country. I can't give you a name of a person. I'm inspired by a collective of people who do right by Kenya and right by Africa. 
Juddy 
18:26 Wow, that's very unique and I love that. And uh, i know you’ve been actively involved in mentoring young entrepreneurs and advocating for youth development. So how do you see entrepreneurship as a pathway to positive change in Africa? 
Ciiru 
18:44 First of all, let me just say, entrepreneurship is not for everybody. Because if we all became entrepreneurs, then who would give us the work? We will give each other work as well. However, it is not for everybody. We need to be very, very careful when we keep telling the youth to become entrepreneurs, and it's not a bad thing when I say it's not for everybody the same way some of us are completely unemployable. I cannot be employed anywhere, not because I don't want to, but I just think it's not the way I was made by our maker. So there is a space for entrepreneurship, there is a space for people who sit in the corporate world like yourselves. But also entrepreneurship is about problem-solving, if you ask me. What is the problem we're trying to solve? That is what should be making us become entrepreneurs. Uhm, there's a lot of case studies you read on businesses are done a lot of Business School from the West, which are fantastic, and we admire those businesses. But the shoe is not the same. It doesn't pinch us the same way. I keep telling any younger person who may want to get into entrepreneurship. What is the problem you're trying to solve by becoming an entrepreneur? Only then will it be deeper and bigger than you. Entrepreneurship should be deeper and bigger than the person who starts the business and really, really should be solving a problem on the continent, because this is where the shoe pinches us most. 
Juddy 
20:06 Awesome, and we keep saying that all our problems on this continent have solutions in the same continent. That's really inspiring, yeah. 
Ciiru 
Absolutely. Because they shoe pinches us, we know what we need to do.
Juddy 
20:17 Exactly. And what advice do you have for aspiring young entrepreneurs? What would you like to tell them? 
Ciiru 
20:23 Solve a problem. Solve a problem, solve a problem. Don't be afraid to be unique. Solve the problem. It's not about copying what someone else is doing solve the problem that you believe is the problem. Only then will you be successful in what you do. Entrepreneurship is also not for the faint of heart. There are long days very discouraging days, and the reward is not instant like we said earlier. But be please solve a problem. Job creation is so much we need. We don't even make toilets in Kenya yet we all use toilets, things like that. Just confuse me, right? I keep talking about even as basic or something. Underwear. We don't make underwear. That I believe we all wear some. Why aren't we just doing the basic things as well? So by doing that, we create jobs, but we also keep the money within the economy. We really need to think differently about what entrepreneurship is. 
Juddy 
21:18 Interesting. And lastly, I'd like to ask you, So what are the three key beliefs or ideas that have been very crucial in leadership as an entrepreneur which might connect to the micro and small entrepreneurs that Inkomoko serves? 
Ciiru 
21:39 Trust yourself, even when you don't know. And it's OK to say you don't know, it’s really is OK to say you don't know, and I believe that every day. And be open enough to learn. And just be honest, say I don't know trust each other, find somebody who is good, if not better than you in what they do, cause we all have a variety of skills. You can't do it alone. You must collaborate with others 100%. If you try and do something alone, you will struggle. And also just know that us the biggest question is in capital letters is W.H.Y. What is your unique, why? Why are you doing what you do? Why do you get up every day? That's for me, every entrepreneur should ask why do I do this? If it's just to make money, OK. But what's the real why? Cause why is what keeps you going through the seasons? And there'll be many. It's the why. Those would be my 3. 
Juddy 
22:40 Thank you. Thank you so much, Ciiru. and you've given us some very insightful insight and can be if you want to be an entrepreneur and we are totally happy to have shared your journey with us. Thank you so much. 
Ciiru 
You're most welcome and thank you for your time and your interest in our story.