How serial trader overcame failure to build empire from grains of rice

Mr Charles Njiru the proprietor of Nice Rice Millers Ltd and Nice Digital City in Mwea. PHOTO | DAVID MUCHUI 

By DAVID MUCHUI

In Summary

• His flagship business, the 11-year-old Nice Rice Mill, has a milling capacity of 150 tonnes a day and churns out about 70 per cent of the over 40,000 tonnes of rice produced in Mwea every year.

When Charles Njiru started working in the 1980s, every month he just had Sh300 to his name; money that he earned as a tailor.

More than three decades later, Mr Njiru, has become a multi-millionaire with the first-ever rice wagons worth Sh13.2 million that distribute about three tonnes of grain from his milling factory to various counties every day.

The serial entrepreneur who has tried his hand at many businesses – from sewing trousers for Sh2 a piece, matatu business, transporting sand to construction sites, growing tomatoes and French beans to starting a brewery – has now found success in the Mwea rice.

His flagship business, the 11-year-old Nice Rice Mill, has a milling capacity of 150 tonnes a day and churns out about 70 per cent of the over 40,000 tonnes of rice produced in Mwea every year.

The factory, which he estimates is valued at over Sh300 million, mills farmers’ rice at Sh3 per kilogramme, besides providing storage facilities and market space for free. He also sells farmers’ rice for an extra commission.

The factory, which sits on a three-acre piece of land, employs 80 permanent staff and close to 5,000 others indirectly through transport and retail businesses.

Mr Njiru’s latest business venture are rice wagons – fabricated vehicles that deliver Pishori rice to Tharaka- Nithi, Kirinyaga and Embu counties with plans to expand to Nairobi, Nanyuki and Nakuru in the coming year.

He assembled the 24 wagons at a total cost of Sh13.2 million, and uses them to distribute about three tonnes of rice from his milling factory to three counties every day.

“Mobile shops are the model of the future. I learnt this during visits to India, China and Dubai,” the 52-year-old entrepreneur said during an interview at his milling factory.

“My dream is to have a wagon in every town in the country.”

With the many travellers who make stopovers in Mwea town, known for its huge plantations under paddy, Mr Njiru saw an investment opportunity.

He has built a shopping mall, Nice Digital City, that hosts a supermarket, a 75-bed hotel, swimming pool, chemist and gardens, among other amenities.

Nice Rice Mills, Nice Charcoal, Nice Mineral Water, Nice Bakeries and Nice Jikos are some of the other ventures that make up the empire that ‘Mkombozi’, as Mr Njiru is commonly referred to, has built.

Mkombozi’s journey to the top began in the 1980s when he was working as a tailor. He later switched employers and started earning based on work done – Sh2 for every trouser and Sh1 for a shirt.

This little pay saw him quit tailoring and go back to his Karaba home where he ventured into farming, growing tomatoes and French beans on a 10-acre farm.