How a Kenyan couple captured the Japanese market in Kenya, with Wangari Wachira

Near to where I live in Nairobi is a Japanese cafe. Whenever I've been the food has been delicious, and the small place is full of people from Japan, enjoying Ramen bowls and cold imported beer. I thought it would be interesting to interview the owner to learn about how the business started. It turns out that the owner Wangari and her husband have cornered down a niche market in the city. Both were born and raised in Kenya, independently decided to learn Japanese as kids and ended up getting married after a mutual friend introduced them so they could connect on the shared love for Japan Today they run a diverse portfolio of businesses to serve Japanese consumers in Kenya. In the interview we discuss how their businesses came to be, the interplay of owning a safari company, supermarket, cafe and farm all geared towards the Japanese market, and practicalities of, for example, selling Bento boxes in Nairobi. It's a really interesting example of finding a business area that's aligned with your personal interests and skill set, and then occupying that niche to very high standard. READ MORE AT:

You can listen to How a Kenyan couple captured the Japanese market in Kenya, with Wangari Wachira online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

How a Kenyan couple captured the Japanese market in Kenya, with Wangari Wachira is an episode from The East Africa Business Podcast: African Start ups | Investing | Entrepreneurship | Interviews.

This episode is 00:51:43 long.

This episode was published on Sep 19, 2019.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from The East Africa Business Podcast: African Start ups | Investing | Entrepreneurship | Interviews when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.