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    Former cas­ual la­bourer cre­ates cas­sava value ad­di­tion em­pire

    A visit to his aunt for busi­ness idea be­came the light bulb mo­ment for Alex Om­b­uto who has found a for­tune in cas­sava root which he adding value in mak­ing crisps, snacks and nu­tri­tional por­ridge in a busi­ness ven­ture with a Sh480,000 an­nual turnover.

    Being out of job where he used to be a cas­ual la­bourer, Alex Otieno Om­b­uto de­cided to visit his aunt in Mom­basa to get some busi­ness tips. With a drive to try his hands on any busi­ness, he de­cided to go back to his home in Kisumu and try cas­sava value ad­di­tion.

     “I had no idea that the cas­sava root I al­ways per­ceived as food for people liv­ing in ab­ject poverty could be used for mak­ing af­ford­able crisps, dough­nuts, chips ,snacks, nu­tri­tional por­ridge and even ugali”, said Mr Om­b­uto. Since he in­tro­duced the idea to Kisumu res­id­ents, com­mer­cial­isa­tion of cas­sava has been tre­mend­ously gain­ing pop­ular­ity and many en­tre­pren­eurs and farm­ers are em­bra­cing the root and its products.

    The trend has picked up around the up­mar­ket Kili­mani in Kisumu town where the busi­ness is boom­ing due to the high de­mand from Asi­ans and In­di­ans liv­ing in the re­gion.

    “In­di­ans love homemade cas­sava crisps and dough­nuts so much that they often flock my busi­ness premises in the even­ing to take some home”, said the 42 year-old en­tre­pren­eur and a res­id­ent of Kili­mani es­tate.
    His busi­ness tar­gets schools, local ho­tels, of­fices, su­per­mar­kets and small re­tail shops.

    “More often, in­dus­trial buy­ers are at­trac­ted by my homemade-level value ad­di­tion that simply in­volves clean­ing, chip­ping and dry­ing which greatly re­duces their pro­duc­tion costs at their plants”, he said.

    From his mod­est sav­ings of sh3,000, Mr Om­b­uto and his wife Florence Om­b­uto are now run­ning a busi­ness with an an­nual turnover of Sh480, 000. They have also em­ployed six work­ers whom they pay Sh250.

    The father of six now ver­sify his busi­ness by of land to plant cas­savas re­duce costs. He plans to ex­pand his ex­port his products in the po­ten­tial growth needs of many cus­tom­ers.

    The price of his home-crisps ranges between Sh100 and Sh300, de­pend­ing quant­ity and size of the. However, for his cli­ents su­per­mar­kets and ho­tels, pur­chased in bulk at a cost de­pend­ing on quant­ity. Given the loc­a­tion of the couple en­joys mono­poly.

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