Entrepreneur takes Kenyan tea to new heights
Noticing a gap in the market, a Kenyan entrepreneur developed an original tea brand, to great success.
“No mountain is too much of a challenge to me,” says 38-year-old Kenyan entrepreneur Romal Shah. Six years ago, at the onset of the global economic recession, Shah quit his job in the UK, ending a 10-year career in corporate banking.
Shah was demoralised by the fact that the stringent credit controls that were being introduced at the bank made it difficult to lend to corporate clients with whom he had built relationships over many years.
“I came back to Kenya in 2007 [but] I had nothing planned as to what I was going to do,” said Shah.
Thanks to his interest in the hospitality industry, Shah helped investors make hotel acquisitions in Kenya as he tried to figure out what to do next.
“Slowly I started meeting people at the golf course. One of the people I met introduced me to a lot of people in the tea industry. I went in thinking we need to do value addition in Kenya. I wanted to do value addition in such a way that a Kenyan tea or coffee is recognisable as Kenyan, not blended with so many other things.”
Shah began learning more about the market and quickly worked out that he could not enter the industry at the farming and brokerage levels.
“Farming is a very difficult world to be in because crops can fail. There are so many external factors you can’t control. Price as well; a lot of coffee pricing is determined by US commodities exchanges. You can’t have control over that.”
Shah then started Tea and Coffee Connection and began producing his own coffee brand, Safari Lounge, which he sold in the UK. Tea and Coffee Connection did good business, distributing its products to health food stores until the recession hit in 2008.
“When there is no spending power in the economy, health food stores [are the first to get hit]. Every week they were closing down four or five stores that I was supplying to.”
Not one to give up easily, Shah decided to shift his focus to Kenya where he noticed a gap in the market: hotels were getting “sweepings off the floor” and not the best quality tea.
“Good quality coffee and tea gets exported. We are left with mediocre level coffee. There are a lot of four star and five star hotels in Kenya and they want orthodox tea, which is higher-end tea.”
Shah approached a few hotels and eventually convinced one regional chain to try out his products. Getting Safari Lounge into the hotel chain was not an easy task because the hotel had been served by a local company for over two decades.
The association with a big hotel brand worked to Safari Lounge’s advantage, and Shah used that platform to begin doing business with other chain hotels.
“We've got a lot of exposure through all these hotels. Everyone opening up a new hotel is suddenly enquiring with us.”
Filling a gap in the market
According to Shah, the firm’s success in breaking into a market that was controlled by one dominant player for decades was driven by his belief that “nothing is impossible”.
“There is a market for every single product, provided you find a unique selling point [and] gap in the market. There is always a gap in the market. The big boys are not always models, the big boys are not always doing things right. The minute they become classed as the big boys, service levels drop, complacency comes in [and] quality is not always what it was before.”
His business, he said, has grown quickly because he concentrated on his competitors’ weak points, turning them into the strengths of the Safari Lounge brand.
Shah is set to give the foreign market another shot as he believes Safari Lounge has what it takes to compete with international brands.
“We are already in talks with a number of markets, mainly South Africa, Middle East and the UK,” said Shah. “I am not looking at going to Europe and saying: ‘I am the next Starbucks.’ We can break into the market and slowly eat into the market. [It takes] patience. Rome wasn’t built in one day. Patience, perseverance and sticking to the quality that we have will grow us exponentially.”
He is also planning to expand within Kenya and East Africa and enter the retail market. “Retail is our primary focus at the moment. We want to give consumers something different. We want to create a buying experience, which is why it’s taken us a little bit longer to get into the retail space,” he said.
Shah has also got his sights set on opening a coffee house to tap into the growing coffee drinking culture in Nairobi.
“Coffee is a fashionable thing. It is a cult, it’s a culture. A lot of students are coming from the US and Europe. There are a lot of NGOs here and people who went to university abroad and they are coming back with this coffee culture. That is why you see the massive growth of coffee shops.”
In the face of challenges, Shah remembers the lessons he has learnt by running marathons. “I took on marathon running and that gave me the biggest perspective of life,” he said. “Every mile I completed was a milestone. Break it down to small pieces, life becomes so much easier. I have got ambitions but I have to be realistic. A business is a marathon, not a sprint.”
The former banker said he finds satisfaction in running his own business.
“It has been an amazing learning experience. It is not a family business that I stepped into. This has all been my vision, my dream. There were times when I would have said enough is enough, but I stuck by it. Failure doesn’t cross my mind.”
Shah advises other entrepreneurs to be patient and not be deterred by the stumbling blocks they encounter in business. To be successful, he said, entrepreneurs ought to build on their strengths and fight their weaknesses.
“There will be many other people trying to trip you up, but believe in yourself and what you want to achieve. My father said to me: ‘You are wasting your time,’ six years ago. Today he hasn’t really said much other than 'well done'. Prove people wrong.”