BY VICTOR ADAR
Becoming an entrepreneur is a tough call. But then again the most successful people in the world are entrepreneurs – and not just from a “wealth” perspective. Think of success in terms of also having lived a full life and mastered who you truly are and what you can accomplish. Well… Kim Muhota is one innovator who identifies with the spirit of enterprise.
The founder and CEO of Plurro believes the best way to discover your limits and push them is to become an entrepreneur – and build something, a company, an NGO, a school: any venture that provides a product or service to others. “It’s a tough journey to do it successfully; but a journey that we should all take at least once,” he says.
Mr Muhota is seeing mobile application industry as being on a good course. Named Plurro, just like the company name, the app was officially launched in Kenya in August 2015 but has been operational in the U.S. nearly 2 years. The original version of the product launched in Beta in 2013. Plurro is currently lighting up the tech space and is poised to create a grass root movement by disrupting the status quo and empowering the customer to leverage the power of the crowd.
Plurro is a win/win as it drives the customers to the Small Medium Enterprise business that offer discounts while creating visibility for their brands to a wider audience. Plurro simply mobilizes the community and negotiates discount on your behalf carving out its own place as one of the best mobile apps for shoppers. “It is similar to having a WhatsApp group only for shopping,” says Muhota.
“Plurro speaks to who Kenyans truly are, hustlers always looking for the best deals at the best possible price. It gives the platform that allows customers to gather together and shop together in real time. The consumer can decide where they want a discount, when they want the discount and how much discount they want,” he says.
Mobile app development is the future. Plurro’s chief executive strongly believes that this is where all the growth is happening around the globe. Mobile technology is changing how people live – and doing so much faster than the Internet did in the early 2000’s. That is why if you are going to build a company today that has a consumer technology dimension, he says, “you have to build mobile first”. But how big is his Plurro Investment?
“We have invested upwards of $1Million (Sh100 million) in the company – technology, operations, marketing, employees, global growth etc,” he says, adding that although theirs is a “private” company (have not publicly disclosed its valuation), they continue to grow the company, add customers and demonstrate the value to consumers, Small Medium Enterprises and large brands.
He says the beauty of a start-up is that you are defining your future every day; and as a result, if there is something you do not like about the product, the company, the strategy et cetera; you can change it pretty quickly to be better positioned for success. It is the rapid strides that keep his light shining. It is the robustness of this tech enterprise that is helping him soldier on, and given a second chance he would not run the company differently. “As a Board of Directors, and management team, we are happy with where the company is headed today. But we are constantly pushing to grow faster,” he says.
Pain of staying a head
There are times things get worse, though, and as an innovator, Muhota is constantly pushing boundaries, and that is often fraught with disappointments and failures. But you learn to live in that space and get comfortable with the unknown. The highest moments to him, however, are typically around launching a new market and also seeing a team of employees in a given market doing exceptionally well. His team is growing with more than 25 people spread across 3 different continents…with 10 or so in Kenya.
The best thing about app development business is its rewards. He says you can develop quickly and learn in real time about what your customers like and don’t like. This allows you to be perfectly in tune with your market. Apps by definition force you to think about the simplest, most critical actions that the customer requires and therefore forces you to create a product that is simple, useful; yet very powerful.
Some of the things that helped him build his mobile app empire include time, patience, and grit. Being willing to take the bet that no one else is willing to take. Having the boldness to jump into the seeming abyss when every survival instinct in your body is telling you not to; but your gut is telling you that it’s the only path to follow, he says.
“One of our biggest challenges is that every market that we open is different; so we have to anticipate these differences but also be flexible enough to adopt strategy quickly as we execute. Finding the right people is also challenging… we are constantly looking for people who are smart, passionate, and willing to do whatever it takes to succeed,” he says.
