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Perhaps you have at a certain point purchased Numa bushera (porridge), or Numa rice soya at your favourite supermarket, or maybe it’s one of your favourite food brands that brings smiles at the dining table.
The CEO Magazine delves into the incredible story of Robert Matsiko, the business tycoon behind Numa Feeds, a food brand that has become a staple in many households and supermarkets across the country.
We explore the twists and turns of Matsiko’s rags- to- riches story, starting from a small rented house to owning a multi-billion factory in Kabwohe, Sheema District. The business worth has grown to an estimated UGX 3b over the years from UGX 140,000.
The Genesis
At 27 years of age when most employed Ugandans are settling in on the job, Robert Matsiko was losing his. The Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries told him that the services he had rendered for 5 years were no longer needed.
That was devastating. Matsiko, who worked as a Poultry Assistant pondered his next move and how to survive. He had a young family, which he had to continue providing for as a father and a husband. However, he was also too scared to look for another job.
“After a month of joblessness, some ideas popped up. For instance, while people in his area were cattle keepers, there was no poultry and animal feed-producing factory in western Uganda; they were buying the feeds from Nuvita in Jinja, which was very far and costly,” he says.
At this point, the knowledge amassed as a poultry assistant – agricultural extension services would bail him out. Venturing into the unknown and unpredictable world of entrepreneurship, Matsiko started the journey of manufacturing animal feeds.
With only Shs140,000 as a retrenchment package, he did not have enough to have a smooth start. Nonetheless, Matsiko invested in relationships to start, convincing his friend Francis Nuwarimpa, a fabricator to partner with him in the project.
That bore fruit, as Nuwarimpa fabricated a small feeds milling machine, which started them off, making feeds for poultry, piggery and dairy cattle feeds in 1995, the year he was retrenched.
Production was done at night while sales and marketing in the day. After selling, Matsiko would then use the proceeds to buy raw materials for the next production.
However, two years later, Nuwarimpa said working day and night wasn’t conducive for him. He quit to concentrate on his fabrication business.
This forced Matsiko to hire two employees to help him. As the business grew he and his wife, Mrs. Mercy Matsiko, decided to formalise the social enterprise, registering it as Numa Feeds Limited, in 1997. This, among others, would enable them to access credit from commercial banks to support growth.
As he waited for further growth, he settled for housing his office and factory in a temporary structure of wood.
Caught mid-air
Just when operations and sales were starting to pick up, in 2000, the structure caught fire. Everything was lost.
Fortunately, his wife operated a secretarial bureau and had some money to help him restart the enterprise. Quickly recollecting himself and not allowing tragedy to hold him down. He pushed forward and this time also added chicken brooding for onward sale to farmers.
Another idea was borne after asking for lunch at one Kampala restaurant but the millet bread (karo) served was of poor quality. Grabbing that opportunity by the horns, on returning to Sheema District, the home of Numa Feeds Ltd, Matsiko asked Nuwarimpa to fabricate for him another machine to mill and pack high-quality nutritious millet flour, for both food and porridge. His target was the urban dwellers.
Deploying the skills of three traditionally experienced women to sort millet, the millet production journey took off. Before long, the women number grew to 10 as demand increased.
To cut back on production costs, Matsiko made the packaging materials himself; he bought the paper from Kampala, painted the labels with predesigned inking screens and glued them into packets.
However, disaster struck again when a neighbour on the bus to Kampala gave him a newspaper laced with chloroform and made away with all the money on him.
“This was money meant to buy chicks to restock the farm. I regained my consciousness in bed at Mengo Hospital,” he says.
Bouncing back
Once again, Matsiko bounced back and his resilience paid off. That is because he was graced with a team from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) led by its then Representative DoudaToure, and the ambassador of France who were visiting Muhame Microfinance. The microfinance brought them to his factory in October 2002, to showcase him as the institution’s progressive client
“On tasting karo from Numa’s millet flour, they were very impressed by its good quality. They were further delighted on learning that it was produced in a local area with rudimentary machinery,” he says.
Toure then introduced Matsiko to Enterprise Uganda, a Kampala-based public-private institution that supports the development of small and medium enterprises. They trained him on how to improve his business.
“I thought they were going to give me money but that was not the case; I was instead asked to pay a small fee for the entrepreneurship training. At that point, I wanted to decline the training but decided to go for it. I do not regret it because I was given life-long skills which have helped me in my entrepreneurship journey. Enterprise Uganda became a mentor and a friend since then,” he says.
After the 2004 training, Matsiko started networking with other groups to share lessons and experiences and it paid off. He even acquired a Diana box-body truck via a Dfcu bank lease.
Also noticing that maize was grown in plenty in Sheema, he later introduced maize flour – Numa Powder Maize – in the product range. While maize brand was for animals and poultry, Maize flour was for human consumption.
Today, Numa boasts a variety of products including Numabushera flour, NumaKaro, Numa maize powder, Numa composite flour for children, Numa soya maize, Numa soya rice, Numa cassava flour, Numa soya plain, Numa rice flour, Numa soya millet, animal and poultry feeds.
Involving children…
While Matsiko has worked so hard, overcoming insurmountable hurdles, he has not left his children out. He, therefore, made a deliberate effort to engage and mentor his children to prepare them to take over from him and his wife when they retire. They even guided them to choose courses that were in line with the company’s employment needs.
“While the children wanted to study for employment elsewhere, we slowly interested them in the enterprise and are deeply involved in the business. All systems and structures have been put in place and they don’t have to worry even when we are away. We have, therefore, built an exit strategy to ensure a smooth transition process,” Mrs Masiko says.
She says they are always confident that everything will run properly even in their absence. The company also has an advisory board with diverse professional backgrounds. This has also played a critical role and will continue to play in ensuring the effective operations and success of the enterprise.
The couple has four children and the first-born, who graduated with a degree in procurement and a Master’s in Business Administration is currently working as the Procurement Officer, reporting to her mother, who is the Head of Procurement. She is currently pursuing a
Their second-born, who graduated with a diploma in Computer Science, a Bachelor of Science in Communication and Information Technology (IT) and a degree in Computer Science is employed in the company’s IT department.
“He built the company’s website and did all the internet and intranet connections .”
The third-born graduated with a degree in Business Administration, specialising in marketing and is currently in the marketing department where he is being mentored.
Their last-born did a design course and does some company designs, such as the compound, and office interior work. She is currently pursuing a degree in digital media art.
From a small rented house…
From a small rented house for the factory, Numa Feeds Ltd owns a multi-billion factory in Kabwohe, Sheema district. The business worth has grown to an estimated UGX 3b over the years from UGX 140,000.
He now supplies his products to major supermarkets in Kampala. That was followed by a distribution centre in Katende-Mpigi district, where finished products are stocked before they are distributed to Central and Eastern Uganda.
The company has also installed a drier and other modern machinery to help in the production and packaging process.
With the help of the United States African Development Foundation (USADF) and Agribusiness (aBi) Trust, Numa Feeds has enhanced community partnerships with farmer groups. That has enabled them to build a strong and reliable supply chain of raw materials while providing a reliable market for farmers’ produce, up to a tune of 900metric tones.
“Numa gets all the cereals it processes from smallholder farmers and to ensure high-quality raw materials, we have strengthened the bulking system at the farmer cluster group level, trained 15,000 supplier farmers in good agricultural practices and best post-harvest methods. We also continually provide extension services and tarpaulins,” he says. This has also helped in supporting women to improve their standards of living.
Matsiko also got a tender to supply malnourished children and vulnerable groups of people in the Ruhiira-Mbarara district, with ground nuts mixed with silverfish. This was under the Millennium Uganda Programme – previously Millennium Promise-Uganda Karamoja.
“We supplied about 40 tons of soya-corn blend flour with sugar in 2019 to school children and the results were amazing,” he says.
The social enterprise has also created employment for about 95 people, including the skilled, semi and unskilled.
A wide door of opportunities
Owing to his persistence, Matsiko was invited to attend an executive programme on inclusive Agribusiness fighting poverty hunger and malnutrition by the World Bank Institute in Washington DC, in 2009. The training and sharing of experiences with other participants from 150 countries equipped him with the knowledge to streamline his business activities.
He also attended the Young Entrepreneurship Summit in São Paulo, Brazil, to help polish his entrepreneurship skills through networking.
He attended the agribusiness training at Galilee International Management Institute in Israel.
By 2011, Matsiko had gained firm ground and experience and he was even invited to share his entrepreneurial story during the year’s annual Global Entrepreneurship workshop in Kampala.
“This opened a door of opportunities for me as Kampala supermarkets such as Capital Shoppers, Shoprite and Kenjoy asked me to start supplying them with our products. Production capacity then increased from 100 kilogrammes per day (3,000kg monthly) to 150 tonnes per month and we hope to double this capacity over the next five years,” he says.
These have constrained his business growth…
High cost of utilities such as electricity and internet have hikes the cost of production.
Access to credit is also a constraining factor. This worsened by heavy and ever changing taxes.
“With the immense change in taxes, we cannot stabilise and being a tax agent become cumbersome. We also lose clients and it becomes a challenge to get service providers. Moreover, the tax policies are not the same across the sector.”
The mushrooming of informal feed makers who did not care about quality saw Matsiko leave the animal feed section for human food.
This was also grounded by the fact that he was not getting feedback from the farmers on the effect of the feeds. “Some of them complained about the results yet they were not completely feeding the birds with the feeds,” he says.
Going by the so many times he has had to fall and get up again, these challenges do not deter him as he has learned that patience and persistence are crucial for the survival of any business.
He also alludes to the need for integrity and honesty to build trust, another key pillar for business longevity.
Going to the future…
Matsiko hopes to make Numa Feeds a centre for the production of quality and nutritious products. He also hopes to explore regional and international markets and build a household name that all Ugandans reckon with. He plans to automate the entire process to increase efficiency.
He is also considering private equity or joint ventures to raise the needed cheaper and long-term capital to fund the business expansion plans.