Social Impact Project for Guru Hygenix Limited's Need for Grant Financing

How This Works

As part of the TRANSFORM Support Hub, you will learn how to advance your career while getting hands on experience on projects like this one.

Project Description and Impact

I started my business (known as The Carpet Guru) as a sole proprietor in 2014. I engaged a sub-contractor that would effectively take care of the execution of garbage collection jobs while I took care of the business development and administrative aspects of the business.. At the time, the sub-contractor, being the owner of the truck and owning the workforce behind the garbage collection activities, would take 80% of the net revenues that I made.

As the business grew, our expenses too began to grow...now, wenot only had garbage bag costs to deal with before coming up with a profit share, we also had office rent, salaries and so on....I added two more sub-contractors to the business- their role was to execute collections in the various other regions that I had continued to on-board.They liked the 80-20 profit share so they jumpred right in.

By 2022, I had grown my customer base from the 25 domestic houses that I started with in 2014 to nearly 7,000 customers. I needed to think of how I could adopt the circular economy model of waste management as opposed to the linear one that involved just simply collecting the garbage and disposing it in the landfills.The Circular economy that I had in mind was the use of the organic waste that we collected to manufacture high quality organic fertilizer. This would not only diversify our revenues, we would also create employement opportunities through recycling.

We signed a 10 year lease to an acre of land that we intended to use for the recycling activity.at about the same time, the very sub-contractor began demanding for more money that I could afford to pay him, I decided to take over hisregion by leasing trucks instead of hiring a sub-contractor.This is the model I have adopted since August 2023. We have been unable to save enough money to kick start our recycling venture .We need to come up with a budget that will enable us to construct the recycling facility.We also need technical assistance in designing this facility so that it is robust and leaves room for future expansion on the neigbouring parcels of land.

Learning Opportunity

The various challenges involved in setting up a Business in Kenya all the while seeing the numerous opportunities that exist for our business to scal not only locally but internationally.