It was an uneventful day in India, but a day to be much remembered in the life of Kalpana Saroj, India’s “Slumdog millionaire”, when her father came to her rescue.

Saroj is a victim of child bride, married off at the tender age of twelve and eventually became a victim of abuse.

She was born in a little village called Roperkheda in Maharashtra, 1958, to a lower middle-class Buddhist family. Saroj’s father was a police constable in another village called Repatkhed in Akola. She lived with her parents and four siblings, which consist of two brothers and two sisters.

Life was meaningful to the beautiful young girl, until she was given to marriage after completing class seven. Having being married off, she moved to Mumbai to live in Thane’s Ulhasnagar slum, with her husband’s family who occupied a 10×5 ft room with 12 to 15 people living under the same roof.

Not only was she subjected to living in a slum, after six months of being married into the family she began to suffer constant physical abuse from her husband and his family. Saroj was beaten by her husband on so many occasions and for very trivial reasons like not putting enough salt in his food. She was shut out from associating with people and was also restricted from maintaining any contact with her family.

One day, Saroj’s father decided to pay his daughter and in-laws a surprise visit. However, instead of surprising them, he turned out to be the surprised one when he came face-to-face with his little daughter and failed to recognise her. She had become very pale and unrecognisable. Without wasting much time, he took his daughter and headed home.

That was a day that marked the beginning of a new dawn for Saroj but not the end to her struggles.

After moving back home, she was ostracized by the village people, who began to taunt her and her family about her return. She faced worse mockery and bully in school from friends and other students living in the same community. Tired of being mocked and ostracized, she decided to take her life by consuming 3 bottles of rat poison. She was rushed to the government hospital, and her life was saved.

Saroj recovered and swore to make a meaning out of her life. She begged her family to allow her move to Mumbai in 1972, convincing them that Mumbai was filled with opportunities of earning. She moved to Mumbai and settled there with her uncle. She started out, working in a garment factory and after some months, she began stitching on the side which brought an added income of Rs 100. Within two years she had saved up a reasonable amount of money that could afford a small house in Kalyan East and she moved her family to Mumbai.

However, a sad situation befell the family. That year, they lost her seventeen years old sister due to lack of medical care. The pain and agony of the dead prompted Saroj to engage further in her pursuit.

In 1975, under the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Scheme – a government scheme for scheduled caste people, Saroj received a loan of Rs 50,000 and started a tailoring business in Kalyan alongside a re-sales furniture venture. The business grew successfully and she handed the furniture business to her father while her younger sister took over the tailoring business.

In 1978, Saroj started an association called Sushikshit Berozgar Yuvak Sanghatana, to help the unemployed. Around 3,000 people who joined her association were helped with placements.

In 1980, Saroj remarried Samir Saroj and they had two children a boy and a girl, but Samir died in 1989 and she inherited her husband’s steel cupboard manufacturing business.

She continued to thrive successfully in business and a higher opportunity came to her in what looked like a blessing in disguise. In 1995, a man brought Saroj an offer to buy his land at a very cheap price claiming to be in urgent need of Rs 2.5 lakh, but she offered him only Rs 1 lakh and he took it. After purchasing the land, she realised that it was under litigation and that was why he had sold it so cheap. With no knowledge about land deals she was fortunate to meet the district collector who helped her to sort out the court issues and in two years she got the permission to sell the land.

She gave the land to a builder who built on it at his own cost and she took 35 per cent of the sale of the finished building and gave the builder 65 per cent. This opened her eye to the benefits in real estate and she delved into it.

Saroj continued to prosper in real estate business and she turned out to be a land litigation expert. This new line of business of course came withn its own challenges, including death threats from competitors. But Saroj never bulged.

After a period of time, the property business had a turnover of Rs 4 crore and she moved into sugar production after investing in a sugarcane factory.

Her fame soon spread across and into the ears of the owner of Kamani Tubes, a manufacturing company that supplies copper tubes, rods, LED lights and more, located in Kurla. Over the years, Kamani Tubes had suffered many losses and litigations. The company had been shut for many years when, in 1987, the courts ordered the workers to run the company, but they had failed to do so successfully.

In 1999, the workers of the company approached Saroj asking her to take over the company and fix the mess. Faced with a company with 3,500 bosses, huge loan and 140 cases of litigation and two unions, Saroj took up Kamani Tubes and began work immediately. It was not an easy task all through the process of rebranding the company. Saroj formed a 10-member team, which included marketing people, finance people, bank directors, lawyers, and government consultants. She met with the then state finance minister and all those who had given loans to Kamani. Along the line, the banks agreed to remove the penalties, interest, and also 24 per cent from the principal amount to help her revive the company. After some time, the loans were cleared which also involved Saroj selling one of her properties in Kalyan.

She took over as Chairperson of the company and in 2009 Kamani Tubes came out of SICA (Sick Industrial Companies Act), and in 2010 the company was restarted and the factory moved to another location. There was an investment of about Rs 5 crore into the company by 2011, a profit of Rs 3 crore was achieved. Kamani Tubes is now a profitable company, with a profit of Rs 5 crore every year.

Saroj continued to venture into other businesses including film production.

With over six hundred employees Saroj currently controls six companies; Kamani Tubes Limited, Kamani Steel Re-Rolling Mills Pvt Ltd, Saikrupa Sugar Factory Pvt Ltd, Kalpana Builders & Developers, Kalpana Saroj & Associations, and the KS Creations Film Production.

Saroj has been recognised on various platforms for her hardwork and impact on the people, society and economy. One of such recognisions includes; the Padma Shri award for Trade and Industry in 2013.

She is happily married to Shubhkaran and she currently lives with her family in Mumbai.

Her story clearly explains the wise saying of Winston Churchill that: “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm”

By Miracle Nwankwo

If you have heard the slogan, “Black is beautiful” then you can easily come to terms with the person and the work of Eunice Cofie. A Ghanian by birth in the United States of America. A true Amazon, in the literal sense of the word. Fearless and bold to face the challenges of life ahead of her.

Behind every forward movement, there is always a pushing force. That pushing force was Eunice’s father who encouraged her to study science. The love for science later led her to major in chemistry/molecular biology at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. Describing the origin of her business in a 2015 interview, Colfie said; “One day whilst studying in my organic chemistry lab class, my eyes were opened to the world of cosmetic science” To succeed in life knowledge can never be underrated. Eunice went further to learn the rudiment of theoretical business. She took classes in accounting and utilized the FAMU Small Business Development Center to learn how to write a business plan.

Of course, Eunice worked so hard to attain the height she is today, including the fact that she recognizes the peculiarity and beauty of the darker skin, which she sets out to enhance. Eunice narrated that while she was in the college in US years back, her peers do not easily recognize those God-given qualities which they sometimes taunted her about: the dark skin, the curly thick hair, roving black eyes etc., were what stood her out when she won a beauty pageant.

Eunice discovered early in life that if you look carefully, there is always something in nothing. With this mindset, she recognized that her dark skill was not a disadvantage but rather an advantage and it should be something to cherish. She set out to make an inroad into cosmetics for colored people worldwide.  As a matter of fact, this was the just the impetus she needed to develop her company Nuekie, Inc.

The company’s purpose is to provide quality dermatological products for ethnic people (i.e. African/African-American, Hispanic, Asian, Middle Eastern, Native American, Pacific Islander). Today, Eunice is the President and Chief Cosmetic Chemist of Nuekie – an innovative health and beauty company for people of color as earlier mentioned.

Giving back to the society is a phrase commonly used by kind-hearted people. This made Eunice to be engaged in a deep commitment to social causes worldwide which led her to make a positive impact across the globe, specifically in Ghana and the Philippines. While in college, Eunice spent her summers working in a village community in Ghana, West Africa implementing the Save a Million Lives HIV/AIDS Education and Prevention Program. 

As the former Miss Black Florida USA, she spent a year promoting her platform Preventing Childhood Obesity and Diabetes through Education and Life Transforming Habits. She was able to contribute greatly to her community by inspiring young people to live healthy lifestyles.

Every human good deed needs a commendation as an encouragement. In 2012, Eunice was honored by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader for her professional accomplishments and commitment to society, as well as her potential to contribute to shaping the world.

The Florida Commission on the Status of Women recognized Eunice with the prestigious 2011 Florida Achievement Award for her commitment to improving the lives of women and families in her community. In 2008, Eunice was named by the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper as one of the “25 Women You Need to Know in Tallahassee”.

She has been featured in noteworthy publications globally. Today, AMAZONS WATCH MAGAZINE is lending a voice to this great up-coming Amazon. A true pathfinder!

By Reuben AKOR

My peers are building houses while I am building a business – The real story of a female entrepreneur in Africa.

Once upon a time, I was a good African girl – I had gotten my degree, I had a good job, a husband, a family home, my kids were in good schools – I was living the African dream! Then I caught the bug. It was always there I think, in the back of my head, waiting to rear its head. I started in secondary school as a hobby – baking cakes and making pencil cases for sale, anything to make an extra buck.

When I finished college and got myself a job, I thought my life was complete. But again money wasn’t enough and I had to come up with ideas on how to raise extra money for bills that come with having children and extended family to take care of. With a bit of capital from my salary, I tried investing in a mobile butchery idea, a small restaurant at a bus station and finally a catering business.

After a couple of years, my African dream fell apart and I found myself divorced and raising three kids as a single mother. Being a divorced woman in Africa is the hardest thing and at 28 years old with 3 kids to take care of on my own, I needed a new dream.

I woke up one day and decided things needed to change drastically in my life. Having had enough of living on pay cheque to pay cheque and from one debt to another, I quit my job and decided to try full-time entrepreneurship. Looking back, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, with 3 young kids to feed, I probably should have kept the job and slowly eased into the business.  I registered the business, moved my kids to my parents’ house and out of expensive private schools. I had to talk to my boys and make them understand that life would be different from now on and that we would have to make sacrifices for a better future. I hope my boys understood that at that time it was the best thing to do to secure a brighter future for them.

In 2013, African Sunsets Events was born and we started off with our first women’s empowerment, business and leadership conference called – “Brand Woman.”  The universe will always respond to your requests by first giving you a positive outcome so that you don’t grow faint and give up too quickly.  Our first event went well. It can only get better from here, I thought, as I planned to have more and more events and business conferences that year. We followed the same marketing methods and tried to host a similar conference two months later thinking the cash would come rolling in – our first mistake. People can only attend so many business conferences in a year before the message feels the same and they begin to get bored – especially in a small market like Zambia.

In Africa, when one person sets up a tomato stall and is seemingly successful at it, within a week or two, you will find three more people selling the same kind of tomatoes on the exact same street. Within 6 months of registering the business, there were at least 10 new companies also hosting business conferences within the same city. So the pressure to keep innovating in order to stay ahead of the competition was very real.

By now my bills were piling up again. It got pretty real, pretty quickly and I had to make a decision again to send my boys to live with their dad while I sort out my financial situation. Countless times I thought about how I should just quit the business and get another job. During my toughest times, I soon realized that doing business in Africa is not just about having a good business idea. With little to no funding for startups, it’s not automatic that you will be singing all the way to the bank. But believe me, it is worth the hassle!

Two to three years into the business, we decided to take a new strategy and work on a reality TV cooking competition. With just an idea, no funding and no investors – we moved forward trying to find sponsors for our show – an idea that wasn’t fully formed yet. Once again the universe was on our side, and most local companies gave us support in the form of goods and services that we could use for the competition. But no cash! Miraculously, we traveled around the country and got contestants to take part in the show. With no advertising budget, we used social media and went door to door at restaurants and hotel’s asking chefs to take part in the competition.

Season one proved that our idea was viable and gave birth to different revenue streams through the TV show. We had to be strong and resilient to overcome challenges faced by every startup in Africa.  No funding, even corruption in the private sector, multinational corporations rear its ugly head as someone has to be given something or be promised something for things to happen your way. We have to contend with petty issues as not wanting to give business to local companies in preference to foreign companies, or not wanting to deal with companies run by women. Some companies we contacted for partnership subtly turned us down in preference to companies run by white foreigners. They racially believed that these guys are seen as more reliable. Unreliable supplier(s), service providers and sponsors who just decide the day before an event/recording not to deliver what they promised or not turning up without a word. It can be as this bad!

Setting up a business in Africa has been the most challenging, blood pressure raising, stressful thing I have ever done – but against all odds, we are still standing.

We have faced insurmountable challenges – debt, final demand letters, repossessions, unreliable suppliers, non-existent cash flows, corruption, sexism, racism, loss of friends, unsupportive family members, homelessness and even sexual harassment to get to where we are now.

Five years on and we are on a whole new level. Through synergies and partnerships, season two of our reality TV show – Mastercook Zambia, begins to air soon throughout Southern Africa, we have two new shows in the brand – a celebrity cooking show and kids cooking show. We launched a recipe magazine and a mobile app, Mastercook competition themed Kids Parties and adult team building events. This month we open up an African fusion restaurant and bar right in the heart of Lusaka, Zambia. We have a cooking school to teach adults and children how to cook gourmet meals, called the Mastercook Academy. We also recently launched a range of food and herb based organic beauty products.

Would I change the journey I have had? I don’t think so; it has made me who I am today. I may not yet be like Aliko Dangote or Strive Masiyiwa, but I am slowly building my own empire – like Martha Stewart or Rachel Ray. I hope I can build a culinary empire right here in Africa.

As my peers are building houses, I am out here being misunderstood as I try to build a business empire that Will hopefully be around for my great, great grandchildren to know that I was here on this earth, I survived poverty and hardship and I left them a legacy – this is my new African dream!

By Abigail Mbuzi

About the author: Abigail Mbuzi is the Managing Director, African Sunsets Restaurant, and Bar. Lusaka, Zambia