Viola Maina is the founder and CEO of Gooseberry Delight Limited in Eldoret which specialises in the production of sauces, juice and jam using the wild fruit.
Before establishing her business in 2019, she was working at Nation Media Group in the advertising department for 17 years before quitting in 2017.
In an interview with ‘How We Made It in Africa’ on March 9, Viola stated that the move was very difficult because she found it difficult to run her business and work for the organisation at the same time.
Viola pursued a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Nairobi focusing on media advertisement adding that she later pursued a course in Political Science at the same institution.
However, after two years of planning, she decided to quit and seek agricultural opportunities that would allow her to empower her community.
To start off, she connected with the founder of Smart Farmer Magazine Bernadette Murgor and joined her company to enable her to connect with other farmers as she was new to the agricultural world.
Viola narrated that while working at the outlet, she attended an exhibition by the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation (KALRO) that featured underutilised fruits including gooseberries.
"KALRO informed me that there was a farmer in Tigoni, Limuru, growing gooseberries, so I went to see him.
“The farmer was very experienced and we went over the advantages and various aspects of growing gooseberries. I was very intrigued,” she added.
Viola’s curiosity about the gooseberry venture compelled her to leave the magazine in 2019 to empower farmers on the advantages of growing gooseberries.
At one of the events, she met a farmer who was harvesting gooseberries and did not have a market to sell and decided to buy the fruits from the farmer and began looking for buyers.
“I bought the gooseberries for ksh30 and sold them for ksh40 in different markets around Eldoret and as the fruit started gaining traction I decided to fully commit to the business
“Later I saw the potential for a company that focused on sales and packaging,” she noted.
In 2020, Viola enrolled in a short course at Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute (KIRDI) in Eldoret, where she learned how to make jam, juices and other products from gooseberries.
She started receiving orders from people interested in exporting the fruits and turned the surplus into sweet and hot sauce, gooseberry chilli sauce, gooseberry jam and gooseberry juice.
“I have spent Ksh6,029,877 investing in my company and I now sell through several retailers including supermarkets,” she noted.
