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    Amisha saw the lim­it­less po­ten­tial in the su­per­fruit that is baobab (mabuyu), and she is doing a good job selling its health be­ne­fits to the world

    baobabAmisha Patel is a third gen­er­a­tion Kenyan, and like many Kenyan-Asi­ans, her great grand­father came to Kenya dur­ing con­struc­tion of Kenya Uganda Rail­way. She was born in Mom­basa and did her school­ing in Nairobi, El­doret and Na­k­uru. She later joined Eger­ton Uni­versity, Njoro, where I ob­tained Bach­el­ors De­gree, (First Class Hons.) in Bio­med­ical Sci­ence and Tech­no­logy. For seven years she worked as a pure sci­ence re­searcher at the former Na­tional In­sti­tute of Med­ical Re­search (now part of The Fran­cis Crick In­sti­tute) in Lon­don. On re­turn­ing to Kenya in 2011, she changed her ca­reer dir­ec­tion to En­vir­on­mental Con­sulta­tion for the man­u­fac­tur­ing and com­mer­cial sec­tor-she is still doing that. In 2013, to­gether with her fam­ily, she set up Elekea, a com­pany that seeks to im­ple­ment sus­tain­able busi­ness prac­tices for our cli­ents through en­vir­on­mental con­sulta­tion. Later, they di­ver­si­fied from a ser­vice-based busi­ness to value ad­di­tion of nat­ural products. And thus, their flag­ship brand, O’Bao , which cov­ers products from the Baobab tree was born. Farm­biz Africa, spoke to her about baobab (mabuyu) fruit and she told us why this wild fruit needs more at­ten­tion than it has been get­ting. Among other things, she also in­tro­duced us to the inner work­ings of her value ad­di­tion busi­ness and also had a word for bud­ding en­tre­pren­eurs.

    What doesn’t the world know about Baobab?

    The baobab tree is an amaz­ing rep­res­ent­a­tion of what nature of­fers us. Every part of that tree has value. The fruit can gen­er­ate the su­per­food powder, the seed re­leases cos­metic oil, the husks can be used as sources of re­new­able fuel (we are work­ing on de­vel­op­ing bri­quet­ting), the leaves have medi­cinal value, the branches are host to bee­hives and the trunk stores water. In my travels as an en­vir­on­mental ex­pert to the ASALs, where this tree grows in the wild, I no­ticed lots of felling to cre­ate land for con­ven­tional ag­ri­cul­ture. This mo­tiv­ated me to identify value ad­di­tion op­tions from the tree so that the tree own­ers see it as fin­an­cial real­isa­tion and not just a waste of space. The  O'Bao brand was star­ted as an av­enue to bring to Kenyans the fruits of their own coun­try and a way of in­stilling pride and pro­tect­ing our nat­ural re­sources. We are cur­rently ready with the Ba­boab fruit powder and baobab seed oil, both of which have been through KEBS. This is a pilot pro­ject with in­cred­ible sup­port from Kenya Forestry Re­search In­sti­tute.

    Where do you source your raw products from and how much does it cost you per unit?

    We source the whole fruit and it comes from Kib­wezi for now. We will be ex­pand­ing our sup­plier base once we es­tab­lish the mar­ket re­sponse to the brand and its products. As we are a micro en­ter­prise still under in­cub­a­tion and are pro­cessing quiet small volumes, thus the cost is very high per unit: we are look­ing at around 60/Kg of fruit (shelled) in­clud­ing trans­port to Nairobi.

    How easy is it to ac­cess the raw product? Are farm­ers doing enough to en­sure con­sist­ent sup­ply?

    mabuyuThe raw ma­ter­ial is sea­sonal and grows wild. It is also spread across hun­dreds of kilo­metres in the South East­ern counties of Kenya. Ac­cess­ing this without a struc­tured ap­proach is a chal­lenge that we are con­tinu­ally work­ing on. Stock­ing is im­port­ant. Being a start-up this is dif­fi­cult with con­straints of fin­ance and space. In the high sea­son the sup­ply is con­sist­ent. However, get­ting the right qual­ity re­mains to be worked on.

    Kindly ex­plain what goes on in the pro­cessing of the Baobab fruit

    The fruit is sor­ted and graded both at har­vest and once it is re­ceived. Each fruit is in­di­vidu­ally in­spec­ted for pest, dis­ease or rot. The good fruit is de-fibred and then passed through a de­huller. We then sieve the powder, and store in dark poly­thene bags to pre­vent light and mois­ture de­grad­a­tion. This is very im­port­ant as key nu­tri­tional in­gredi­ent (Vit­amin C) is af­fected by these para­met­ers. This also pre­vents the growth of mi­croor­gan­isms. Our O’Bao pack­ing is also de­signed to in­cor­por­ate these mech­an­isms (foiled to re­tain fresh­ness and pre­vent light ac­cess). The seeds from de­hulling are washed and sun dried. They are then passed through a screw oil press to expel the oil. The oil is sieved through or­ganic muslin and al­lowed to settle for 1 month in a sealed opaque stor­age con­tainer. Pack­ing is also done in opaque bottles with pump dis­pensers to pre­vent ac­cess to light and air which would aid de­grad­a­tion. As the oil is pure, we some­times ex­pect to see light sed­i­ment at the base of the bottle and should not be a con­cern to cus­tom­ers. We try to go as or­ganic as pos­sible.

    How much does a unit of O’Bao cost off the su­per­mar­ket shelf?

    O’Bao Baobab Powder re­tails at between KSh500-560 per 100g; O’Bao Baobab Seed Oil is ex­pec­ted to re­tail at between KSh450-595 per 50ml bottle. The world mar­ket value is double for both.

    How do you mar­ket the O’Bao product?

    We have stocked our brand at Healthy U stores mainly in Nairobi ( Gigiri, Yaya, Gal­leria, Junc­tion, Sarit Centre and West­g­ate) and Na­k­uru (West­side mall). It is also stocked at Red­nest Salon in Park Suites, Park­lands Road and Auras Beauty Salon at New Muthaiga Mall. We are in talks with other re­tail­ers so that we may reach more Kenyans.

    What ad­vice would you give to Kenyan farm­ers/youth, who want to make money from their ideas?

    I be­lieve the ap­proach to doing busi­ness just for money is un­sus­tain­able and short sighted. Have mile­stones in­stead of goals. The idea is to never reach your goal, al­low­ing for di­ver­si­fic­a­tion to en­sure suc­cess. Do your home­work and be ready to sac­ri­fice your time and money. Many busi­nesses do not sur­vive be­cause the vis­ion is lost once money starts flow­ing in. Be eth­ical in your busi­ness prac­tices but also real­istic. There is noth­ing more dam­aging to your brand than lack of in­teg­rity. Do your best to meet cus­tomer de­mands but have a dam­age con­trol plan when you are un­suc­cess­ful in doing so. Have real­istic ex­pect­a­tions from your busi­ness. Do not ex­pect to make mil­lions the first, second or even third year. You are just start­ing to get some re­turns on in­vest­ment. Sur­vive the 5 years mark and you can safely say you are a busi­ness per­son. Know when to get out. Per­sever­ance and de­term­in­a­tion is well and good, but it’s im­port­ant to have an exit plan should things not work out.

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