Creating opportunities for himself in digital media

Creativity. Ronald Tuhirwe says they are in an industry where quality and creativity are the major selling points.

PHOTOS BY JOAN SALMON

What you need to know:

Entrepreneur. The graduate of Business Administration started his first venture after a four-month casual job as a newspaper inserter in his first year. Today, with his partner, they own Moving Ads, a digital marketing and production company. Joan Salmon caught up with Ronald Tuhirwe.

Entrepreneurship is not a journey for the weak for there is no certainty about what tomorrow holds. It is passion that drives an entrepreneur. For a young person, with little or no savings to their name, the journey is even harder because the challenges are immense.

Ronald Tuhirwe is one such entrepreneur who was driven by the love for business.
“I was not passionate about being employed because I wanted to be myself, flexible, and experience creative growth,” he says.

He, therefore, never dropped his CV anywhere.

Tuhirwe did a bachelor’s in Business Administration at Uganda Christian University between 2011 and 2014. To earn some money at the end of his first semester of university, he got a job working with New Vision as a paper inserter for four months. The zeal he had for work drove him to start a rolex business with one employee when the second semester started.
“The deal was that I give him capital and he starts paying me after two weeks,” he says.

Returns
However, the returns were not as promising as expected. He added a pool table to his investments, something he did with a friend and put it at a busy location. With a business mind that never rested, Tuhirwe also opened up a coffee and cake shop alongside another friend.

“I thought that Mukono was ready for coffee, but my forecast was wrong. However, I was thankful that the cake was bought frequently.”

All these were learning curves on how to manage people and businesses. While Tuhirwe endeavoured to ensure that his school work was in order all the way, business got overwhelming in his third year.
“I dropped all the ventures, save for the pool table.”

Adding to the strain was the loss of his grandmother who was so dear to him.
“She taught me and always insisted on me saying, ‘thank you’, ‘please’, ‘I am sorry’. These have been my guiding principles.”

He graduated in late 2014 with a major in management, “I decided to major in management despite also being proficient in finance because I did not see myself have an 8-to-5 job as an accountant. I desired to manage people, be managed as well as manage business.”

In 2015, Tuhirwe partnered with Mark Ssemakula to start Moving Ads. “We had gone to the same secondary school, same church and shared a passion for business.” While they had previously shared about personal businesses, this meeting was about a business they could do jointly.

In the first year, they worked a lot with freelancers.
“We were only business savvy but needed to do graphics so we made it a point to learn a lot from them.”

They have been into the advertising business for three-and-half years, saying that in the first year, it was mainly about testing the waters.
“We began with selling spaces in 2015/16. We would hire taxis and design adverts at the back of the car seats. We also did the same with hostels; we signed contracts with the hostel manages to hire advertising spaces.”

Elsewhere
They would put snap frames in those spaces that would house the adverts. While that seemed great for starters in the advertising industry, they soon ventured elsewhere.

“We came to learn that the demand was not for spaces but the content in those spaces. While we would have continued doing the two concurrently, we did not want to stretch our resources thin, thus opted for content development.”

The major content channels in the industry are literature, graphics and video, however, they have to ensure that regardless of what channel the client prefers, they create ever evolving content that will appeal to the potential customers.

Starting out
“We started in 2015 in Ssemakula’s kitchen. It was not in use so we turned it into our office space.” They were there until mid-2016 before moving to Wandegeya South Wing market.

“However, the space was not big enough and they closed up early yet there were days we needed to stay for some more hours to do a thing or two.”

With that, they moved back to the kitchen. The late nights and dedication paid off because in 2017, they got their third contract. “This helped us a lot as we got money enough to rent the office space in Muyenga. I specifically love it because it is quiet.”

That is their location to date.

Clients
Their first deal came at the end of 2015 from Uganda Christian University. They have also worked with Steel and Tube, Roke Telecom, NTV, Asante Waste Management, and Victoria Motors, among others. Their first content development project was The Timeline, which they did in mid-2016. However, they diversified hence leaving it after its first season.

CHALLENGES
Man power. This is such a great issue because some people with passion have no expertise while those with expertise have a high asking price.

Finances. “As a start-up, accessing finances has been quite difficult and that hampers operations.”

Knowledge gap. “While it exists, it can be bridged through utilising the internet.”

Networks. “For long, we did all the work and did not get the chance to reach out to people. But we are trying to get there in order to broaden our networks.”

FUTURE PROSPECTS
“We are trying to get as many deals as possible for this year because we are in a very saturated industry where quality and creativity are the major selling points. So we are doing our best to go above and beyond our clients’ expectations.
We want to put our content across Africa because we really believe we have great content and believe people will love to see it. We also desire to work on even bigger projects.
We need more talent coming in. So far, we have five permanent staff members, seven freelancers and three interns.”