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Lioness Weekender spoke to founder, Jane Maigua, to know extra about her entrepreneurial journey, and what drives her to make a distinction each in phrases of the setting and to job creation for ladies and youth.
What does your organization do?
We supply macadamia nuts in shells from 1000’s of smallholder farmers, processing and exporting uncooked macadamia kernels into worldwide markets by a B2B mannequin.
What impressed you to start out your organization?
The struggles that I noticed with farmers not getting worth for his or her crop as middlemen exploited them by very personal pricing. My mother and father have been peasant farmers dealing with such struggles as properly. I used to be additionally aspired to run an export enterprise that will additionally create alternatives for many individuals, and to encourage different girls to run company companies.
Why ought to anybody use your service or product?
High manufacturing requirements below excessive stage and stringent meals security programs. We have FSSC 22000 Certification, ISO 9001 certification and Kosher certification all of which allow us to guarantee our buyer of prime quality and protected meals product from Exotic. We have a excessive buyer orientation, and to attain this we be sure that our employees function in an setting and tradition that fosters respect, teamwork, diligence, integrity, innovation, and prime quality requirements.
Tell us a bit about your workforce
Our workforce contains of 29 full time staff and 68 momentary staff.
The administration workforce contains of a dynamic and proficient workforce of 8, 5 being girls. They all are extremely certified and skilled of their respective roles and are at all times extremely motivated to ship our buyer promise. We do have lots of enjoyable working collectively and have a number of social actions akin to workforce constructing occasions, celebration of everybody’s birthday, graduations, child showers and so on. because the case perhaps.
Share a bit about your entrepreneurial journey. And do you come from an entrepreneurial background?
My mom was a peasant farmer and ran just a few Agri based mostly companies whereas my father was a bus driver. I noticed them wrestle with the farm actions however on the identical time educated my two siblings and I from the identical. I aspired to be an astute entrepreneur at one time in my life however like everybody else I needed to undergo schooling and the eminent path. I ended up in entrepreneurship growth sector working with nationwide and worldwide NGOs in addition to the UN on tasks that supported Small and Medium Enterprises to start out and develop their companies. From this I gained lots of information and motivation to nonetheless pursue my dream of beginning a enterprise. 25 years into my profession I resigned from the UN to start out the Agro processing and export of nuts, which I’ve finished with my companions for the final 4 years. It is difficult and thrilling on the identical time.
What are your future plans and aspirations in your firm?
Future plans are to broaden our operations to incorporate macadamia oils and different specialty oils akin to sesame, moringa and baobab. We additionally plan to get into roasted nuts which we are able to provide home markets in addition to the broader African market. We additionally hope to construct our personal manufacturing facility that may scale up our manufacturing kind the two,500MT nuts in shell we at present are processing yearly to five,000MT yearly.
What offers you essentially the most satisfaction being an entrepreneur?
Having happy clients with our nuts and alternatively seeing ladies and men having a constant supply of respectable revenue on the manufacturing facility and worth chain, together with our small scale farmers and suppliers.
What’s the largest piece of recommendation you can provide to different girls trying to start-up?
You can go as excessive as you dream and even larger, so set your ambitions excessive. Seek to beat the societal or cultural perceptions in addition to self-limitation and go for gold! It is feasible to excel as a girl. Put within the work and benefit from the outcomes.
To be taught extra about Jane’s entrepreneurial journey and her enterprise, Exotic EPZ, contact her through e-mail: jane@exoticepz.co.ke and go to the corporate’s web site and social media platforms:
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