Malcom Muyiinda, the radio manager who vends fruits

Malcolm Muyiinda is the station manager at Touch FM but this does not stop him from running his fruit vending business under Zara Fruits.
Call it odd but Muyiinda is making cash and he is not afraid of hawking his fruits in a door-to-door marketing strategy.
Through the mad rush of Kampala traffic jam, his mobile phone cannot stops buzzing as order-after-order come through followed by directions.
One would think Muyiinda has been doing this job for years but he reveals it has only been six-months, but the results are just but overwhelming.

How he started
While moving around Kampala, Muyiinda narrates, he stumbled into a Kenyan man who was looking for a place where he could buy three tonnes of fruits every week.
“I moved from village to village but then fruits were out of season and those who had them had already sold them on farm,” he recalls.

After two days of searching, Muyiinda had some good news but his Kenyan client had got another supplier.
So what was he going to tell his new-found supplier?
But as fate might have it he decided to get into fruits vending after a friend he had found during the search had told him it was a profitable business.
“This friend of mine did not stop at luring me into vending fruits but gave me three bags of passion fruits on credit to start with right away,” he says.
“I repaid her ‘loan’ the following day reinvesting the rest of the money and since then I have never looked back,” he adds.

Capita investment
Many people at least start with some savings or soft loans, but for Muyiinda he used no money to start but used three bags that had been loaned to him by a friend.
The bags containing passion fruits, each realised Shs570,000.
Muyiinda sold the three bags in a single day with each yielding a profit of Shs190, 000.
It’s from these proceeds that he was able to pay back his loan ploughing the other money into buying more fruits. His business, he says is now worth Shs10m.

Product prices
Muyiinda packs his fruits in packets of 45 to 70 passion fruits which he sells at Shs10, 000. However, this is only subject to market trends, considering there are times when the market faces serious scarcity.
For the same prices he packs between 30 and 25 oranges and 10 mangoes pieces for Shs10,000.

Marketing and operation
Muyiinda works with Touch Fm a job which requires him to be at work from 8am to 5pm. One would wonder how he gets time to hawk his fruits.
“The way you position and how you market your products and services matters in business,” he says.
Muyiinda has found social media as a good platform that he uses to market his business and from here as he says he has found most of his clients.
After buying the fruits, Muyiinda sorts, washes and packs them in environmentally friendly packs ready to deliver.

He uses his car to pick fruits from suppliers as well as finding customers.
In a given day he a delivers to a minimum of 40 clients but his movement is limited to the Kampala metropolis.
Muyiinda operates a Facebook page that he solely uses to market his products on various social group network pages.
He has established a network of farmers who every now and then call him to sell him fruits.
His biggest clients are office workers and people in upscale residences of Muyenga, Kansanga, Kabalagala, Ntinda, Kiwatule, Najeera, Kireka, Namugongo, and Kyaliwajala.

Challenges
Because he deals in fresh fruits which can be available depending on the season, this has been a challenge especially during the low season.
“Unlike other people who halt business when fruits are out of season, I look at other fruits that are available in the market,” he says.
He says many times, especially when passion fruits are out of season prices go through the roofs and there are few customers.

“I have few clients when fruits are out of season. So I have to explain to them but many because they rarely go out, don’t believe that a bag of passion fruits can increase from Shs350,00 to more than Shs700,000,” he says.
The other challenge that Muyiinda experiences is the heavy traffic on Kampala roads, which means he to spend much on fuel and keep long on the road.
“What I usually do is to start from where, I stopped the previous day when I am doing deliveries for the next day then I take on the fresh orders,” he says.

Future plans
Muyiinda plans to start exporting fruit products with emphasis on fruits that are indigenous to Uganda.

Product variety

Muyiinda started with vending passion fruits but later diversified to other fruit varieties, including mangoes, oranges, grapes, straw berries, tangerines, and apples, among others.
Some of these fruits are not produced in the country but he imports them to sustain client needs and preferences.
“Instead of waiting for the season of passion fruit, I decided to venture into oranges, mangoes and started importing grapes, apples, tangerines and kiwi,” he says. He imports most fruits from Kenya and South Africa.