Feeding employees at work

Neil is a natural entrepreneur and innovator.  When he was 16 he started selling clothes and fashion items to schoolmates. At 17 he started printing T-Shirts and initially started selling at his school and eventually built a distribution network in other schools in Mombasa. 

He started Kenya's first recruitment website in 2002. In 2015 he started Nairobi's first luxury taxi service and in 2016, introduced a brand new way for employers to feed their employees via what was possibly the world's first digital lunch vouchers. 

Whilst in employment he launched Kenya's first retail insurance outlets, Kenya's first Shariah compliant credit card and convinced his employer to be the first bank to issue MasterCard in Kenya.  

He has extensive sub-saharan experience having lead organizations in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Zambia. He has also worked in the US and the UK. 

Outside innovating, cycles and plays squash. 

Employers know that feeding their employees (especially the blue collared ones) drives productivity and motivation, but find it cumbersome to run a kitchen or manage a caterer.  Reconciliation of manual records is administratively taxing and prone to fraud

Many blue collared employees in Africa skip lunch and go hungry because they cannot afford it. The lack of proper nutrition leads lower productivity and higher absenteeism. 

Most informal food vendors to not have the skills, time or resources to market to organizations and increase their revenues.

M-Kula makes it easy for the employer to feed, provides a wholesome meal to the employee and drives revenue to informal food vendors.  

For the employer, we are solving the problem  around the difficulties in employee feeding, specifically running a kitchen or canteen, managing and reconciling with a caterer and closing the loopholes that could result in fraud. 

For the employee, we are facilitating the provision of an employer provided meal which is safe, wholesome and nutritious. 

For the merchant, we are providing additional and consistent revenue. 

M-Kula is a digital voucher that is given provided by an employer to the employee for his / her lunch.

The employer uses a portal to manage the process and can limit the spend per day or transaction as well as where and when the voucher can be redeemed. 

The employee can redeem using their phone number and a PIN on their phone, the vendor phone or with a QR code that the vendor scans. 

The vendor accepts the vouchers and get reports on out vendor app or portal.  We then settle with the vendor via mobile money if the payment is less than $700, or via bank transfer. 

The project allows employers to easily feed his / her employees. 

The project allows employees, many of whom would skip lunch, to get a wholesome and nutritious meal from a vendor who observes some safety standards. 

The project allows the vendor to get additional revenue and access to resources to help them professionalize. 

The employees who get a meal though our voucher system would otherwise have gone hungry. 

The vendors in out network are being upskilled and through accepting the voucher get incremental revenue. 

Employee feeding has always been a headache. Many blue collared employees skip lunch because they cannot afford it. 

In Europe, many employers use a paper vouchers to provide lunch to their employees. In the home of M-Pesa mobile money it made sense to combine the paper voucher and the acceptance of digital solutions. 

I have worked in the food industry or food related industries most of my working life.

Food is a basic need. Everyone needs to eat. And food motivates everyone, at all levels.   

According to World Vision and FAO, one in every 4 people in Africa is affected by hunger and is under nourished.  We can help change this.  

We have a product that works. We have a product that employers, employees and vendors, love. We have traction. 

In 2018 we had 2215 beneficiaries, 4925 users in 2019, and at May 2020 we have 9,678. 

When we first started M-Kula, we went marketing to HR managers with the assumption that HR managers would want to take care of their teams.  We did not close a single client meeting for 6 months by meeting HR managers. We did close a few clients when we were dealing with the CEO. 

We then realized that most HR managers in Kenya are HR administrative managers and do not have a strategic role, and they did not have employee productivity, motivation ir retention as a KPI. To them it was simply more work. 

Today we deal with CEOs, COOs and heads of production or operations.  They are the ones who are interested in improving operational efficiencies. 

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