00:14 Hello, and welcome to another informative episode of Zoom Africa. Zoom Africa is produced by BoP Innovation Center, the one-stop shop for investors, donors, and advisors with a clear interest on inclusive business. For more information, please visit www.bopinnovationcenter.org. My name is Ken Oweno, and in this episode, we are focusing on bringing your innovation to the market. In other words, how do you get your product or service in the hands of as many customers as possible?

00:56 When you have translated your innovative idea into a sellable product or service and have got a strong validation from consumers, the next natural step will be to work on an effective strategy to launch your innovative idea into the market. Now, this can be a challenge, especially if you are targeting low income consumers because you'll be operating in areas that generally lack good infrastructure and formalized supply chains. Elizabeth Gikebe knows the challenges of introducing something totally new into the market and the joy of gaining the often elusive trust of consumers. Elizabeth is the founder and director of Mhogo Foods in Kenya. Mhogo Foods seeks to reduce hunger by sourcing cassava from smallholder farmers and processing this into affordable, nutritious, and gluten-free flour and chips.

01:55 Yeah people are dying because of drought . It's not because they are living in arid or semi-arid areas. It's because we are over relying on maize and wheat flour. That means if it doesn't rain, that people will not have enough food to take. People in the arid and semi-arid areas will actually be affected a lot because we all rely on the same maize and wheat flour. I did some research so I realized that cassava is a drought resistant crop and from the research I saw that we can replace our maize and wheat flour with cassava.

02:27 Every innovation needs a go to market strategy. For Elizabeth, social media proved to be a good ground for launching the cassava flour into the market.

02:38 I knew that we would get our dried cassavas from the local markets. So what happened, I asked a friend of mine to send me 20 kilos of dried cassava. So I took the 20 kilos, milled that 20 kilos and then I just weighed one kilo and then I took some plastic bags and then made a sticker with branding and something that looks nice and then slapped the stick on the plastic bags. I took a photo of the plastic bags of cassava flour and then put them on Facebook.

03:14 This strategy worked quite well and demand for the cassava flour grew exponentially.

03:20 From Facebook I got so many requests, so many people asking where they can get the flour. And that is the moment that I realized that this flour has demand.

03:28 There are three main ways that you can use to get products to under-served consumers. You can use existing wholesale and retail networks. For example, a chain of local grocery stores you could opt for hybrid partnerships. This is where you team up with organizations that already have a large reach among your target group or you could opt to distribute your product through micro entrepreneurs. For Elizabeth, the choice of using existing networks came even without prompting.

03:58 Still from Facebook, there's an Indian guy who called me and he told me that he has a shop, he'd like us to try and sell the flour. I took 10 kilos to him and within less than a week they were all sold out.

04:10 Retailers and other existing channels can help you move your products but they may not be able to help you reach consumers who are outside the networks or even help you with knowledge on which specific consumers to target.

04:25 I didn't even have an idea of actually whom I was supposed to target. I just threw it out there to see how people would react. So I wasn't targeting anyone. And again, personally, I didn't have a lot of information so I didn't have that information to know whom to target and whom not to target because I was also learning in the process.

04:55 It is a good idea to team up with organizations that already have a large reach among your target group and Elizabeth partnered with BoP Innovation Center under the To Scale program, which is the largest agribusiness incubator in Africa. In this program Mhogo Foods was assisted to develop emotionally and socially viable business models, which includes the people in the BoP as consumers, producers and also as entrepreneurs.

05:24 When we started a project with BoP, we went to the field and then I've got inside consumers like, "what do you think about this packaging? What would you like us to improve". So what we did first is to have a focus group of women because by now we had known that we made are the major consumers, women with children. We had known that they're the major consumers of our flour. So we had that focus group for the women and then they give us their views. They'd like something that looks good and looks appealing and at the same time they'd like it to be affordable. So we shouldn't compromise quality when we talk about the BoP.

06:09 As an entrepreneur, you need to find the best way to attract and retain customers. BoP Innovation Center developed the ATEAR or A TEAR model, which allows you to go through the various steps of consumer acquisition that are specific to the BoP. The steps of their ATEAR model are: A for Attention. That is you attract the attention of your consumers. T for Trust. That is, creating purchase interest among your consumers by taking away risks they have identified. E for Experience. That is enabling your consumers to truly experience and try your offering. A for Action. That is to stimulate your consumers, to actually buy your offering. And R for Retention. Which is building a lasting relationship with your buyer so that you can retain them and have them make repeated purchases and referrals. Mhogo Foods uses social media extensively as a good avenue for implementing the ATEAR model.

07:16 Mhogo Foods has around 14,000 followers on Facebook and I think around 5,000 followers on Instagram. I am the social media marketer. So I make sure that I interact with each and every customer that asks a question on social media just to make sure that I get how they feel about our product. Whether they like it and where we can improve the product. So what I do is, I just post something on social media and then see how they react to it. If someone is saying something negative, I just go to them on a direct message and then talk to them and then ask them what the problem is. Try to solve the problem for them.

08:02 This enhanced marketing strategy has enabled Mhogo Foods to diversify its product portfolio and successfully reach different market segments.

08:15 The fortified flour came about because we wanted to target the people at the bottom of the pyramid. Assuming that these people could not afford the vitamins and minerals that are essential for the day to day nutrition of everyone from children to mothers and also to men. That is why we decided to include the fortified. Fortified is cassava flour with added vitamins and minerals. We have our vitamin A, vitamin B and we have folic acid and iron. That is what we have fortified it with. But the unfortified, that's our flour was now the initial flour that we had and it was meant for these other markets. The other mass market.

09:02 In addition to opening up new market, Mhogo Foods has also been able to add an element of impact to their business. And as we know having an impact is essential to having success in the BoP market.

09:17 The ones that wanted the fortified we realized, are mostly the BoP because they wanted to make sure that their family is well fed and their families has nutritious food. Because if the family is well fed and they have nutritious food to reduce the cases of them going to hospital or of them being sick and going to hospital and having to spend the money.

09:39 Since its inception Mhogo Foods has been growing steadily. The company was recently named as one of the global players to watch in the cassava industry. That makes Elizabeth one of the people that you might want to listen to if you are an upcoming entrepreneur or you're interested in going into agribusiness.

10:02 If you have an idea and you believe in it and that is what you think you really wanted to do, just go for it. You don't have to wait for anything. Believe in yourself and you'll go to places. Once you believe in yourself, other people will believe in you.

10:22 You are listening to Zoom Africa with me, Ken Owino. We've been talking about bringing your innovation to the market. Or are you planning to launch a product or a service to the BoP market? Please remember that, one: every innovation needs at go to market strategy. An idea will never sell itself, particularly in under-served markets. Two: It is very costly and perhaps risky to take all marketing and distribution activities yourself. Success lies in establishing the right partnerships. And three: When selling something new, you will fast need to gain the trust of consumers. They will only invest if the benefits are understood and even better if passionately experienced.

11:20 That is all we had time for on this episode of Zoom Africa. My name is Ken Oweno. Let's link up again for another informative episode of Zoom Africa, where you get the best of entrepreneurship and innovation in Africa.