If you are an avid reader of celebrity and entertainment news websites
in Kenya and online, you must have come across a website called Ghafla. But do you know the story behind this great
website found in Kenya?
Well if you do not know then I will tell you the story
about it and also you will be able to learn some great lessons from this young
man who is behind this great website.
The story of this great website begins
when it’s founder Samuel Manjani is admitted to a University called Jomo
Kenyatta University which is found in Kenya for a course called Bachelor of
Electronics and Computer Engineering.
After the first semester he discovers that he failed 8 course units and
he is then dismissed from the University.
With nothing to do after being dismissed, he spends a few months
listening to music at his parents’ home and an idea hits him.
This idea is about starting up a website that
could provide lyrics for the songs that were being released by Kenyan music
artists so that the music fans could easily sing along the songs easily.
He
then decides to launch a website called Kenyanlyrics.com.
After a year or so the website is growing at a very slow pace and so he
meets up with a friend who has been selling crafts online to foreigners and the
government has levied a lot of taxes on the crafts and other goods and his
business has stalled. This friend of his
is called Mukendele.
He talks his friend
into joining his company but he is reluctant.
They then get another idea of organising a photography event and they
move around the different corporate companies looking for sponsors and these
sponsors promise them heaven on earth but they actually do not deliver
anything.
For several months, they keep visiting the offices of the different
multinational corporations but none it willing to help bring their idea to life
and so they count their losses and give up on that idea.
With nothing else to do, the two friends
decide to focus their efforts on Kenyanlyrics.com but this time to ensure
that their website can grow very fast,
they decide to rebrand the website and call it Ghafla.com and in addition they
add some celebrity news, music and videos onto the platform.
They now decide to look for an incubation
centre where they can work on their idea full time but this seems to be a very
big hurdle and so they one day come across a place called Nailab in the centre
of Nairobi and here they meet the guy who is running the incubation centre and
they try talking to him so that he could allow them to work at the incubation centre
instead of continuing to work at home.
They sell their idea to him and he does
not see how they are going to make money off the idea and he rejects them for
the first time.
After a few days, they approach him again and this time, he
gives them the chance to work at Nailab incubation centre.
A few weeks after
starting work at Nailab, Samuel Manjani was one day browsing through Facebook
and he saw an advert about some venture fund that was looking for some
start-ups that they could invest in and he sent a message to them about his
idea.
They set up a date and met with
the Venture fund alongside other eager aspiring entrepreneurs in Kenya. That
venture fund is called 88mph.
They
explained their idea to these people who were sceptical about it and were not
sure whether they would actually be able to get back their money if they were
to invest in these young boys who wanted to start up a company.
But they
decided to give them a chance and invest $26000 of their seed money into the
small business called Ghafla.
That leap of faith has given birth to one of the
biggest websites in Kenya called Ghafla.com.
The website began operating in
2011, and now seven years later it is having over a million monthly page views
and thousands of visitors everyday and very many Kenyans and some others from
other countries visit the website to get the latest news and information about
their celebrities.
Ghafla.com has now
expanded after a failed buy out by a company called Ringier and now according
to Mr. Manjani who is the face behind
the website, he would like it to be like the likes of Facebook and Google that
have grown and become monopolies in their business.
Now that I have told you the story behind this great website and Kenyan
entrepreneur, it is now time to look at some of the lessons that you can
actually learn from him for other aspiring entrepreneurs out there.
Great
timeless lessons that you can learn from the founder of Ghafla, Samuel Manjani.
1. Never give
up on life
When he was dismissed from University after failing some of the course
units, most people would have counted him out of the people who will succeed in
life but Samuel Manjani never gave up on life and continued looking for
something else that he could do and become better at even without school.
Whenever
you face difficulties in your life, you should not give up on life but you
should try to find out other better things that you can do to actually make
your life better and even become a better version of yourself.
For most people
school is everything and without school, they believe there is no success.
But
from the story of Samuel Manjani, we can see that despite the fact that he
failed in school, he was able to become very successful in life.
For aspiring entrepreneurs out there who are
planning to join the world of business, you should never give up on your dreams
or becoming successful in life. Just keep moving and finding things that you
are actually very good at doing.
2. You should
be Persistent
Samuel Manjani and his friend were very persistent when they were
looking for an incubation centre.
After asking for help and being rejected for
the first time, they did not give up and instead they kept pushing harder and
harder until they were accepted. So you
should always be persistent.
3. You should
look for new opportunities
When Samuel Manjani discovered that he could not fund the venture using
his own finances, he decided to search for some venture funders online and was
able to land on 88mph which helped his website grow very fast.
So for all those entrepreneurs, you should
always look for some opportunities that may help accelerate the growth of your
business as quickly as possible.
4. Look for
ways in which you can improve your business
After setting up Kenyanlyrics.com, Samuel Manjani realised that the
website was not scalable and it would take very long for it grow and so they
decided to add some celebrity news and music onto it so that its users would be
able to visit the website to check out some news about their favourite music
artists and celebrities and it worked.
So if you are an entrepreneur out there
find ways of improving your business and making it better or even getting more
customers into your business.
I hope you have learnt some lessons from this Kenyan entrepreneur called
Samuel Manjani who can be called the Mark Zuckerberg of Kenya.
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