Founder Mythos
Making the Kiosk the Customer
Providing an efficient supply chain to the informal retailer such as mama mboga, kiosk owner, and the shopkeeper was where we felt we could play.
Twiga's customer was the vegetable-stall owner and the corner kiosk, not the supermarket chain.
The most fragmented, least-served part of the market was exactly where a rail could add the most value.
I got to see a lot about the state of retail in Africa in terms of how fragmented it is.
He ran Coca-Cola across 33 countries before founding Twiga, seeing African retail's fragmentation from the inside.
The insight that built the company came from two decades of watching goods struggle to reach the shelf.
It is one of those questions you ask yourself: when you are older in life, would you ever look back and regret opportunities you had but never took?
He left the presidency of a multinational's regional business to start over from nothing.
The safe corporate seat was the risky choice, measured against a life not fully spent.