My TEF Story: James Kariuki
Name: James Kariuki
Country: Kenya
Sector: Clean cook stoves and fuel/Renewable sustainable clean energy.
It has been great being part of the Tony Elumelu Foundation family, thanks to an awesome team and Chairman. I have received first class entrepreneurship training, my business plan has been professionally evaluated by Accenture, and I have a 1000 cohort mentor support system in place. I have been kick-started with a $ 5,000 seed investment and paired with a Global Bank.
For my business, we are building a unique, low cost, innovative, universal market fit clean cooking solution to meet the aspirations of low income households that cannot afford Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) or electricity for cooking all over the world. I am starting small but am intensely focused on scaling globally shortly. We address the Sustainable Development Global Goals No 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 & 13 simultaneously.
With the seed investment from TEF, we placed an order for a Computer Numerical Control, Dual gas and plasma metal profile cutting machine that a few months ago was just a distant pipe dream, now actualized by TEF.
It is one of the worlds’ most advanced and versatile manufacturing tool, enabling production of small, demand driven quantities of Industrial standard cook stoves and supporting hardware, the capacity to scale with market demand, at a fraction of full scale industrial investment and without the risk of expensive idle start up industrial capacity investment.
Everything in our business plan is falling in place.We have secured Government authority to take our solution to the market.We exhibited at the Nairobi International Trade Fair, received over 2000 pre orders and inspiring customer feed back. Our biggest problem will be to meet market demand but we will innovate a solution to that, i just love it.
Happy 5th Birthday TEF and 500 more. The TEF journey to develop Africa by Africans has started.
