The 28-Year-Old Kenyan Entrepreneur Who Built A $7 Million Retail And Advertising Business

Trushar Khetia

Trushar Khetia is one of Kenya’s most outstanding young entrepreneurs.

The 28-year-old serial entrepreneur is the founder of Tria Group, an outdoor advertising firm that uses public transit vehicles to market leading consumer goods in Kenya.

Tria, which was founded in 2013, places advertising on more than 200 buses in Nairobi for clients such as Unilever, Google, HP, Dell, and Konica Minolta. The company has annual revenues exceeding $1.3 million.

Khetia is also the founder of Society Stores, one of the most popular supermarkets in Thika, a thriving industrial town 40 kilometers northeast of Nairobi.

The four-story retail outlet is doing more than $6 million in annual revenues and Khetia is set to open two other stores before the end of this year.

Khetia’s two companies have combined revenues of more than $7 million. I recently had a chat with him where he recounted his entrepreneurial journey, reflected on the lessons he has learned along the way and spoke about his future plans.

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I have worked in several small jobs across university from video library sales, perfume shops, charity fundraising. Always I have enjoyed sales roles as that is where I found my strength in being able to persuade people. My first major employment was as a Marketing Manager at Securex in Nairobi for 6 months whilst being a part-time DJ at the same time at Pavement Club in Nairobi.

After graduating in the UK, I worked for Procter & Gamble (P&G) for 3 years as a business development manager looking after some of UK’s biggest retailers. I successfully grew every single business I was given and was promoted 3 times in the space of 3 years.

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So far Tria in Kenya has worked with over 30 clients within a year. This includes some of the world’s biggest companies and brands. (more explained in my profile and portfolio for Tria).Tria in Tanzania is still at infancy stage but we have already got 4 clients on board who have started with us.

The most unique thing we did as part of transit media is to also venture into airline media with a partnership with Precision Air, one of Tanzania’s major airlines. For our major client Konica Minolta, we did in-plan advertising which involved doing the table trays of the aircraft. This was an out of this world experience!

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Tria in Kenya has crossed $1.3 million dollars since we started 1.5 years ago. Tanzania is still small with revenues of about $ 50,000 in 6 months.

The reach of our media is phenomenal as we have over 110 branded buses on the road every day and each bus carries a total of 400 to 500 people in a single day so you can imagine the reach a brand gets with our media. This is not even taking into account the millions that see the ad externally in traffic, whilst walking, or driving in the month.

In everything I have achieved, I have always put the issue of money last. As difficult as it is to get start-up funding from banks out there, there are always alternative ways to get what you want in order to go to where you need to.

Society Stores was started purely from pulling all the profits that Tria had made in its first full year and reinvesting it back to buy the retail business. This has been a calculated risk whereby I have put the stakes of one company to build another.

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I had to start with just enough finance to take control of the shop and I bridged the remaining funds required through borrowing from private individuals. After that, the business itself has started paying back for itself from the daily sales and profits we make.

Real success is about leaving a name and legacy behind that outlives you even if you die. To me it is leaving a scratch, a mark on this planet, that I did something good, I made a difference, I had an impact to peoples’ lives during my time on earth!

The biggest fear you should have in life is not doing enough with it. I am not afraid of death but afraid of dying too early before I have fulfilled all that I need to.

A lot of young African entrepreneurs have great ideas, but do not have the courage or mindset to take the risk with their idea and action. So in the end, they end up being their own biggest barrier to success purely because they lack self-belief and self-confidence and a positive mindset which forms the core of the success. Yet they will find excuses that it is their family or society or their employers that are holding them back.

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If you do not take risks in life, then what is the point of living, where you are chained by your own fears of failure. You have to break yourself free in order to experience your true fullest potential.

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