Contemplating on the strides he has made in business, David Libendi, a young entrepreneur narrates his transformative journey with Chai Sacco.
David, who is currently a cyber business owner, says he started his business way back in campus, saving the little amount of money he was able to get from the business. As a young vibrant student, his ambition could not allow him to sit back and ask for money from his parents back at home. However, he would take his fellow students’ work, print them in a friend’s cyber located in Mombasa town then
deliver them to the students in school and get paid.
A business he did for quite a while until he was able to start a small cyber business in the school premise then later decided to look for a location outside the school.
Having embraced a saving culture in Chai Sacco for a long time, he was in dire need of a loan to enable him settle his business outside the school premise. He went to the sacco where he was able to get access to his first loan of 495,000 which he used to build a container, a place he calls home.
However, no sooner had he settled than he lost over ksh. 100,000 in the first month of the business. His shop was broken into where he lost his tools of trade; computers, printers amongst other properties worth the amount. This toed him down for a while that he had to shut down his cyber business for some time.
As for the loan, Chai Sacco was lenient enough to restructure his loan payment, where he had his loan repayment reduced from Ksh. 15,000 to Ksh. 8,000 per month, a move he says should be embraced by other financial institutions such as banks.
He later resumed the business sourcing a laptop and a printer from a friend and currently runs the business successfully having bought other electronic requirements after a while.
Mr. Libendi has now recruited six of his friends to join Chai Sacco. This he says, is the best sacco since the society stood with him in time of need and better still understood him and his situation at the time when he couldn’t pay his loan as stipulated earlier.
Looking back, Libendi stated that his life has changed from the first time he started saving the little amount of cash he earned. Embracing a saving culture has enabled him to invest heavily in the business which currently gives him a good return on investment.
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