Anne Wanjiru Kariuki

Redefining her business strategy

Anne is married and has three children. When Anne started to participate in the WorldWideWomen-Programme her grocery store was in an unfavourable situation: Shortly before, the shop had been robbed by burglars. Most of her products had been stolen and she was struggling to pay off her loan, which she had taken out to buy products. In the programme, Anne learnt how to manage her business and keep control over revenues and expenses. During this process she realised that her business had actually been pretty profitable. But in the past Anne had invested her profits the wrong way. So she used her newly acquired knowledge to redefine her business strategy and decided to focus on the trading of M-Pesa. M-Pesa is a system for processing cashless payments via mobile phones. As the only M-Pesa distributor in her community and due to the popularity of the system in Kenya Anne hoped that she could soon offset her financial losses. And she was right. Her monthly income increased in only a short time. Her success did not only come from her smart business idea, but also the improvement of her services: Anne introduced regular opening hours and started to consult her customers properly. In addition to that, she kept an overview over revenues and expenses and paid herself a fixed salary, with which she had to get by. Anne’s efforts were worth it: She was able to pay off her loan and expand the product range in her shop with her own money. Anne is happy with her income and is already planning for the future. Her dream is to own a wholesale in Uthiru shopping centre one day and to expand her M-Pesa-agency.