At only 28, Eugene Mbugua has rubbed shoulders with some of the big names in the world, all thanks to his staggering fortune spanning across the fields of entertainment, real estate, beef farming, advertising and publishing, as well as television.
Kalasha International, where he sits as a judge, describes him as a 28-year-old content creator, writer, producer, and director.
Eugene made history as the youngest producer with a show on Kenyan national television when at 22, his first TV show Young Rich premiered on K24 TV.
Eugene has since gone on to create and produce more television shows among them Get in The Kitchen, Our Perfect Wedding, Stori Yangu, My Friend, Being Bahati, Foods of Kenya and The Best Of, shows that have aired on K24 TV, KTN, NTV, Maisha Magic East, Showmax, Iflix, Kwese, Startimes and Trigger (South Africa).
He is also the managing director of the Number 7 club and bar in Nairobi CBD and Number 7 Lion in Westlands.
The young businessman is the CEO of a publishing enterprise called My Yearbook Kenya Ltd, which publishes yearbooks for schools, companies, and also the government.
Talking to CNBC Africa in January 2018, the entertainment entrepreneur explained that he slowly climbed his way to the top of his game.
"Although I was lucky to have a guardian pay my school fees, there wasn’t much for extras. I was the odd guy walking around campus in slippers. I learned early in life that I needed to make my own money to survive," he stated.
It was after this conviction that he tried his luck in income-generating projects like a movie shop, a video game arcade, some travel consulting, and teaching film part-time until his budding show was picked by K24 TV.
In 2014, Mbugua was listed by Business Daily among Kenya’s male Top 40 under 40 entrepreneurs. In the same year, Eugene bagged the Kalasha Award for his work on the film Child for Hire.
In 2016, The Standard announced that Forbes listed Eugene among the 30 most promising entrepreneurs under the age of 30 in Africa, a feat he repeated in 2017.
The social media-shy Eugene holds a degree in television production and print media from USIU.
