Buying maize

David

Mombasa, Kenya

100% repaid

Follow David

How it Works

Entrepreneur

Name

David

Member since

December 2014

On-time repayments

214 installments • 77%

About Me

My name is David Musee, born and bred in Machakos County near Nairobi. I was a born in a family of seven and I am the first born. Machakos is a semi arid area and the main activity there is cattle rearing. Due to the harsh climatic conditions the pastrolists keep poor quality indigenous breed and they don’t make much from this activity.

I spent my childhood looking after by father’s cattle as was the norm them. I also attended school for my primary and secondary school before moving to Mombasa in an effort to break the yoke of poverty back home.

I came to Mombasa about 25 years ago and I was lucky enough to get a job in a food processing factory. I worked there for 11 years while making savings and learning skills that would come in handy when I started a similar business of my own later.
I am happily married with three children all who are in school.

My Business

My business deals with selling of food spices, food colors and flavours. I have been running this business for a long time and I do it with help of my brother, my wife and some casuals. I buy spices like cumin, cloves, pepper etc from farmers then dry and later ground them to fine form for sale to wholesalers and retail outlets.

There is always a ready market in Mombasa due to its large population of locals who like to put strong spices in their delicacies. There is also a huge market in the neighboring countries but I am yet to venture there due to financial constraints which have limited me to just serving the local market. I hope to create confidence with Zidisha lenders and with time get a good enough credit to enable me expand my business territory.

I make a net profit of $400 per month but this can easily go up if I am given a financial credit backing which I have lacked for a long time.

Loan Proposal

As mentioned in one of my previous posts, I want to venture into maize selling business to supplement my income. This has been made possible by the recent success I made in my spices business and I now feel it is high time I diversified my business.

Maize is the most common food in Kenya and I have contacted two schools who have shown serious interest in buying this product from me. If given this money, I will spend it to buy 10 bags of maize (one bag cost around $30) and then sell the same mainly to schools. I prefer dealing with schools since the payment is always guaranteed.

My past experience will come in handy when doing this business. I will mark up my price at 20% profit.