My name is Stephen Maina Njenga, I am Kenyan aged 27 years and I am single.

I am the first born in a family of 6; two boys and four sisters. One of my sister just sat for her final examinations for the secondary education, two of my sisters are in Secondary school and the last born is in primary school. My only brother is in his pre education class.

We live with my parents in Limuru District of Kiambu County of Kenya.

My father is a small scale farmer and my mother is in small scale business woman in the nearby market.

I cleared my secondary school education in 2005 and I am currently pursuing my tertiary level education. I was motivated to start a business after I realized that the money that I was earning from where I was employed 3 years ago was not enough to sustain me and at the same time to support my family and especially my siblings who were looking upon me as the first born.

I found it wise to start the business so that apart from its main objective of earning extra income, it would also keep my sister busy as they started clearing their form four studies.

I use the earnings that I make from my business to pay my school fees and my sister’s school fees who early this year joined college. Through my business earnings, I can also support my family the small way I can.

My business is called Klin Ventures we specialize in selling all packaging materials, especially polythene bags.

Polythene bags have become a necessity both for the sellers and the buyers in Kenya. There demand is very high. My business is situated near the market thus the demand is always very high. I have employed two people, one of them does the supplies the packaging materials to shopkeepers and business people in the market, every morning and collect the money every evening. The other person remains in the shop throughout selling to the nearby customers.

Our main customers are business people in the market, the shop keepers and hoteliers in the area, our customers prefer our shop because we are near them and we also supply the products in the business door step, they just need to make a call to us and we deliver to them.

The only challenge with the business is that it requires a very huge capital because the polythene bags are very expensive and they are much diversified, thus there is need for that large capital so that you can have assorted polythene bags for your customers.

We sell an average of 250 – 400 pieces of polythene bags every day, depending on the day. On average a packet of polythene bag will give a profit of sh.5 (0.056 us dollars)each. Thus we make a gross profit of shs. 1500 – 2000 (17 - 22 US dollars) per day.

It makes an average of 60,000 per month; I pay rent of 10,000, each of the sales people in the business is paid monthly salary of 7,500. I pay an average of 2000 for water and electricity bills per month.

If I was able to stock more and assorted items in the shop, my target would rise to an average of 4,000 per day.

I intend to introduce another product in my business of supplying printing papers in the various institutions and places that have to use the printing papers. The area that my business is located, there are various learning institutions, offices, cyber cafes and government institutions that use the printing papers daily. All this creates a very large market for printing papers in the region.

I will be supplied the printing papers at a wholesale price of $4 per rim and i will supply to my potential clients at a retail price of $ 5.8 per rim thus i will be making a net profit of $1.8 per rim sold.

My expectation is to be selling 5 - 7 rims daily and later increase the number to 10- 12 rims.

I expect my profit to increase with about 20% when i introduce the sale of printing papers and I will offer employment to another young person who will be suplying the papers.

I therefore humbly request the Zidisha lenders to support me get the loan so that I can be able to start supplying the papers.