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Food scientist makes toddlers’ porridge
What keeps her going is her resolve to succeed. Unlike many youths, Irene Nviiri Sikibi has long stopped playing the blame game that has seen quite a reasonable number of young people fail to explore their full potential.
After completing her studies at Kyambogo University, in Food Science and Technology, she didn’t do what many of her colleagues do: look of a job. Instead, she decided to make one for herself and others.
Armed with knowledge on food science, she ventured into an area that not until lately was being dominated with imported products. “After acquiring experience from institutions that process food stuff, I thought it was time for me to try it on my own,” said Ms Nviiri in an interview with Prosper recently.
Banking on my education and the experience I had gathered while working with food processing firms, “I decided to start making high nutrients porridge for toddlers and later for children of all ages,” said the young entrepreneur.
With her Bazadde baby porridge trade mark, not only slowly is she creating her mark in the entrepreneurship circles, but also steadily building her fortunes and brand as well.
Using natural raw materials for all her products such as millet, soya, maize, rice, sorghum, and silver fish (Mukene), she is able to turn around natural and nutritious porridge for toddlers and children up to the age of three.
Like any other ambitious entrepreneur, Ms Nviiri would in the near future want to have her own firm, although she is not whining at the moment. Her energy is now channeled towards making use of part of her apartment to do the best she can in this circumstance.
Even though supply challenges may to stand in her way, she hopes to start getting direct supply from the firm as opposed to the local market with time.
Currently, about 35 young people directly and indirectly benefit from her innovation, with many involved in sales and marketing the Bazadde products. She said the experiment she had with children born with HIV/Aids has since demonstrated that her natural products is not only good for normal children but also critical if not preferable for the sickly ones too.
However, her capacity to expand to supermarkets and other retail outlets across the country is limited by among others, bureaucracy and shortage of funds to meet the requirements for the urban based stores.
“We need to pay for the bar codes before having our products in supermarkets. We are also being dragged by certification process—all that are costly in terms of money,” she said.
Coupled with lack of processing machines, and proper packaging—things get a little harder, given that all those demands translate to money, yet that “enabling factor” is rather scarce.
To fix the challenges that hinder her presence in the market, she may need to spend at least not less than Shs10million—this will specifically cover packaging, bar codes and certification related charges and clearance. But despite all her unresolved challenges she hasn’t withered.
“I have a duty to maintain high quality standards and consistent supply. And that is what is at the back of my mind—giving the best I could even in the face of challenges,” she said.
Going forward, Ms Nviiri says she is open to partnership with a like mind. This therefore means that anybody who wants to be part of her promising business can approach her for further negations. But worth noting is that her vision is to grow her idea.
She started her business with about Shs3million—mainly computed in packaging and development. From each pack, she now earns about Shs300 as profit. She said the cost of her product is influenced by the cost of production that she said is slightly at the higher end.
And for the five years, although she has been largely depending on a hired public machine for processing her products, in addition to the difficult economic terrain, she has managed to expand her products to cover the adults and the elderly too.