 Welcome back to Entrepreneurship Tuesday radio on why in the morning at Y254 channel is that you can find us across all our social media handles at Michelle Ashira is that you can find me across all my social in this particular session we dive into another interview that we look at we're looking at corporate governance in security industry and joining me is a young man who has done well for himself considering his age right so his name is Joseph Thucco is a knowledgeable legal and finance practitioner so his career journey is very inspirational having been self-employed when he founded MOBA to his current position heading SGA security so we're having that conversation and much more so you want to stick around because you don't want to miss out listening to what Joseph Thucco has to say when it comes to you know starting your own company challenges that you face how to overcome that and also juggling employment and self-employment so much more right here on entrepreneurship Tuesday and no father doing Joseph Thucco Karibusana a sentisana and glad to be here right so for someone who's meeting you for the first time how would you do like how would you describe yourself to this person who is Joseph Thucco um so Joseph Thucco is indeed a young finance and legal professional who is excited about making an impact um to the world um yeah i guess that's in brief what i'll say been Tuesday right here on why the morning it's entrepreneurship Tuesday when you're looking to cater for the young people and just inspire them to start their own businesses also if they employment on the two ways they can improve in particular areas just to improve in their income and looking at your down memory lane you have an interesting story so before MOBA was founded and before you tell us what MOBA is all about take us through where you built your desire of just starting something of your own okay so this started all out in nice in campus that is when i was thinking about how would i make an impact to the world and of course that's completely linked with me looking at how i'd be able to earn an income and realizing that the way to earn an income is by adding value to people giving a service etc so in that sense i started looking at what how could i add value to the world and that's slowly how we came up with ideas as you know in business and entrepreneurship your aim is to um meet a demand to meet a need of our customers yeah and what gap did you see in the market space that you decided that you know what i'm actually going to meet this particular demand okay so first of all we understood a shift in the way business was being done so you notice towards that is in 2015 um a lot of businesses were moving away from the brick and mortar businesses into more online and um on demand uh structures of business so um these are the times when Uber is coming in when when you want to get your pizza you order it in all this so convenience was becoming more and more essential to everyone so understanding that need then you look at the industry and see okay where can i apply this where could i learn apply this shift and add value to that industry but also add value to myself so that's how then we noticed and of course having been advised then maybe let's look into the alcohol delivery industry and use that as a starting point to build um an infrastructure which could be scalable and used across not only Kenya but hopefully Africa yeah well and i believe that's when moba was actually created exactly so tell us more about moba and uh how it operates and how we can actually get it yeah okay brilliant so moba is an on-demand drinks delivery application and um this is available on app store um and also on web and you can access it from anywhere you need and the point for it is to enable you to access lika um conveniently at your own convenience at your home or wherever you are and also sort of having also a social impact in that sense um that um you really don't have to drink and drive and such other hazards that would come with um the late night alcohol run for example so yeah that's that's what moba is about so how long did you take you to come up with this particular software and of course how can people like access their app and most definitely 18 years and above and above so how can people access this app before we actually moved to now you being into the security industry thank you so much and indeed right now focused on the security industry but what i'd say is um with regard to how the app came up it's such a journey into memory lane and what i'd say to everyone is have your dream dream big and i have to say you don't have to have finance or uh minkamal you have to have is that dream and for us um the journey to where we got moba two was basically a journey of three young men with a dream and who who against the odds were able to build a sustainable product all right and uh some of might be curious yeah did that particular business fail that's the reason why you decided to get into employment and now you're looking at corporate management in security industry so did that business actually you know fail now you're moving to employment what happened okay wow interesting so at at all the time i was always employed i have to confirm that so yes i was juggling that and for sure in my role in the organization was also around corporate governance and um financial management um so when we're building that i provided that insight and at that time was working in a one of the big for audit firms and through this um skills i was able to bring moba to wherever it was and it still is functioning and doing well in fact it did partner with one of the largest uh uh distributors in um in kenya alcohol distributors in kenya and is doing quite well and even today you can be able to have your drink delivered to you at any point in time so no the i did not move because the business failed but one of the interesting things for me and why i pursued employment in parallel is to build my capacity as an entrepreneur to be able to lead and create um structures for business so as you start out yes you you can walk with all the skills you have but for my dream and the dream of a lot of people is to build global businesses and that takes more skills than just running a kiosk you know and that's what i'm developing um as i work for global businesses um right now working for sga security which is a leading security provider in east africa and sitting um at the board and listening to all these directors run a global business helps you um get different perspectives as to how to run a business yourself so yes for me it's all about growth and which is a key aspect for me just have to say that you're very very wise to uh taking it upon yourself like it's intentional that you're building capacity and what i've really loved is the fact that you intend to transfer this particular knowledge back to your own business and in this situation mopa for the young person is uh listening to this conversation and they they in a place whereby they in in employment but they feel like i need to live so that i can focus on my own you know this particular idea that i have but they have not yet built capacity in a way they will give it the best this particular business idea they have so what will be your advice to that particular person wow i'd say um in business you don't have to be everything right and maybe one of the tools of you being able to um be successful is to have meaningful partnerships and partners right so if you are supposed to build capacity to bring a certain skillset to your business then you could focus on that and have um other people meet the other needs of the business so that's a tradeoff where you'd have with a good partnership you could be able to have a very good tradeoff and learn what am i supposed to bring it to the table and do i need more time to do it as you run with a few other things so i'd say forming meaningful partnerships could be the way the way forward to solve that issue all right and how are you managing juggling you know uh your own business and now being the security industry uh okay interesting so for me at at this moment i'm out of active management of the of the of the business and for sure then i don't have to juggle so there are people who are running MOBA and it is fully managed so i don't have to participate in day-to-day management but what i'd say is at the time when i was involved in active management and this was um say before pre-security industry and i'll explain why is it was all a play of balance so what you need to do is understand that one does not need to fall because of the other so you need to have a very good balance in your in your life because what i'd encourage people not only in your employment but also in your business to give 100 percent giving anything less will impact on one or the other yeah now let's get into the security industry so how did you get into security industry and uh what is your position what is your role when it comes to SGA farm well you found me in an interesting um transitional phase i was uh just say two and a half months ago i was the group corporate governance manager at SGA security now i'm the group financial controller of at SGA security and what this entails is leadership at a group level meaning across the all the the companies in East Africa for SGA and providing stewardship and support to enable business success in each of our countries of operation and how i got into it is also an interesting story for me in the sense that as i mentioned i was uh working in an audit firm before and i'd say more head hunted in the sense that i was busy going about being excellent in my job and one day i get a call saying that i'd been recommended to for this position and and of course i was curious about the opportunity and having spoken to the group ceo and chairman about the opportunity i was convinced that that was my next step in my in my journey and that's as i mentioned why i took then a back step um from entrepreneurship then i could build the corporate governance skillset well someone is watching this and people are running corporate businesses uh corporate uh you know enterprise out here we also have back at home and we need security guards and they're always wondering what kind of what is the procedure that you know the company goes uh to just do a background check on the security guards just for the safety of clients yeah brilliant so we have a very thorough screening process for our security guards to ensure that quality and also um to meet i expect the demands of our of our clients as you might be aware we deal with um not only local but international clients and we did we we are determined to be give the best quality so some of this checks we do is we have um uh a clear vetting process by our HR we have a clear investigations team and we keep on having impromptu checks just to ensure that nothing could be going on so we we are not only restricted to uh mind the guiding we also do protect cash yes i've seen that yes yes so you'll see our vehicles transporting um cash for uh banks and other big enterprises with a lot of cash movement and for that even needs higher security levels so similar measures to what we take when recruiting our team to secure large amounts of cash is the same processes which we use to ensure that we get the right guards for for you okay and also for the sake of my viewers who uh they have the love and desire to be part in the security team who is eligible to be part of uh you know the security department in you know they are guards and other different levels so who is eligible for these particular jobs okay i'd say um we hire across scope so we have um from a service perspective operational perspective where we have um we have guards we have drivers we have the range of services which we do cleaning and all and of course within the organization we have all sorts of roles which are more administrative and from finance technology and entrepreneurship and innovation um internally um which i'm also passionate about so qualifications indeed are um the minimum qualifications at least you have a diploma for certain roles in the operational perspective but also when it comes to the professional each role has a different requirement and you can get this through our website and always reach out through our website the information is there and you can be able to learn more about the opportunities and available from us okay so what type of training do uh do your security guard actually receive wow okay and that is very intense and i've watched this briefly in this basically they they go through um uh say three months cost where they get trained on basic drills um for some of our countries we even have fire fire amuse where that is uh legal and customer handling so yes that's basically the training program we've put in place for each guard once they join the organization and frequent refresher courses all right so and uh how do you guys come up with the you know the pricing of the services okay so that is uh bottom up for of course we we look at our cost and the value that we bring and uh when you're coming up with a with a price for anything the first step is to really understand the cost of the of delivering the service then plus a reasonable markup to enable the rest of the infrastructure to be able to deliver the kind of quality our clients expect okay so do you have insurance that will actually protect a client uh in a case of reliability brilliant indeed that's one of the key governance issues is not only to protect our clients from the downside risk but also as a entrepreneur and business person as you're addressing some of the youth is to also cover your business from the downside risk and indeed we have robust insurance policies to ensure that in case of anything which of course we put in as much controls as possible to prevent that in case of any bad scenario then we are able to be covered as a company but also our client is able to be covered um indeed yes and for a potential client and we are thinking that what do you need to provide when it comes to if I need your services in the aspect of my company or even if any just personal security what are certain of things that I need to provide and how fast can I get my services from your from your firm turn around is up to one day if we have everything and so we value tailor making tailor made solutions to each of our customers so um what depending on what you require so we might you might want a technological solution so you want your uh your place man in terms of CCTV and all then we'd require to come to your premises to be able to identify the the needs security needs and give you a tailored solution so it's not the kind of place where you just tell me I want 20 CCTV cameras no we'll come and tell you know you need maybe five or ten and this is where you should place them if it's about guarding again we look at what are your actual guarding needs of course you can always tell us we just want one but as as security experts we'd want to go above and beyond analyze your security needs and then recommend what's best for you so that's the the kind of partnership we have with our customers and our value driven approach to our customers so you sit down with the client and get to understand what exactly they need and custom make custom make exactly what defeats there exactly all right is the company licensed indeed um so with the security industry um is regulated in different aspects so the company is licensed to the extent that it should be licensed and um in different areas of operations then we some areas there's no requirement for license and that's one of the challenges in the security industry where you have um a lot of um and players who are not really say compliant compliant or qualified and that might create a discrepancy between the cost of that you ask why one company would charge x amount and another x y amount and that contributes to to that the lack of regulation but the interesting thing is recently I believe in 2018 um there was a private security regulation act which was passed and what the government is trying to do is to regulate the security industry in Kenya and that will be really good for not only the clients but also for the companies by controlling the the quality of all of what security the security companies yeah and for looking at the whole transition from mobar to now working in the security industry what are the some of the lessons that you're learning from this side remember we are building capacity the day to just go and just you know inject to back to your own businesses so what are so far what have you uh in terms of capacity built and so far that you look forward to you know transition it back to the business wow I'd say um a bigger understanding as to corporate governance and um the role it plays in managing so transparency the importance of transparency in your organization and communication with all stakeholders looking um from and owners or directors perspective um looking at your duty not only to generate profit but your duty to all other stakeholders your employees your clients your suppliers that is really coming out and these kinds of partnerships are very valuable in some instances you might think hey the only person who matters is the owner but as as you as I get into this we are we are in a service industry and we have over 20 000 employees you realize the value of your employee and the um the need to treat them with dignity and respect and realize how valuable they are so that's one of the areas I look at and two it's about prudent financial management right um as your organization gets bigger and better you can't run it um like say your um petikash your kitchen kash and all you really need to keep track of your um of your finances strictly and um as we really recently experienced have been um privileged to see and experience the corona virus in the sense of looking at how to manage it and I'd say um being aware and ready for unexpected scenarios is a key element for any business to consider so at any one point in time we should be able to weather a storm and that entails building buffers and always being keen on what's happening in the environment all right and looking at your bio your lawyer and your background in finance of course so do you practice law brilliant so I'm not in litigation practice okay but I am in corporate practice so I'm not too keen on going to court but that doesn't mean if I need to I won't I so I am an advocate of the high court and I have my practicing certificate I do all my continuous professional development and I'm ready to take on anyone in court if necessary so I do um apply it but now from a corporate perspective and that's where you see um issues around contracts and um and sorts of all sorts of agreements shareholders um agreements and negotiations just change the heart from being financial from accounts just change just yo I'm here I'm a lawyer let's do this and it's wow yeah you putting it that way I'd put I always tell people I made a recent comment which somebody remarked that yeah when you sit with me you're sitting with um two people at once and I think it's a valuable tool for me and actually one of my key success factors in my career in the sense that when I sit I look at things from multiple perspectives I um one of the challenges is and this is something I picked up when I was starting my career is that as a lawyer more often than not people look at it from the legality of issues but forget that every decision not only has a legal impact but has a financial impact every decision you make right so being able to look at a decision from all these angles really helps you have better decision and actually being informed and exposed to this particular information actually gives you an advantage and an upper hand exactly so at any one point in time as I listen to if um uh from a management perspective if I'm listening to a lawyer I'm able to understand and relate to what they're saying but also link and understand what does this mean from a financial and general business perspective and vice versa when I'm listening to a finance person and explain something to me I can quickly pick up what are the legal issues the tax issues and all other issues that relate and from even my experience in entrepreneurship and all then also um having experienced how would I put it um having experienced the operational aspects of business then you can also link a third lens to looking at situations about um how does this affect my day to day operations and success of my business so yes um I'd say all these things help me have a more holistic approach to issues and decisions yes so the country was in a recession period whereby uh you know lockdown you know we have we still have kafi but there was time like it was last year that nothing was moving back in terms of economic or economical and looking at you you enjoyed two sides of this story in terms of MOBA uh I believe like MOBA operates quite well during recession considering like you know uh people back home and they have time in their hands and probably leisure they will like they would like to drink and when you look about the other side of the security industry whereby I believe COVID-19 really affected uh all sector of industries and uh security industry being involved tell us about the both worlds the both worlds MOBA and now in security industry for sure thank you for that um I'd say for sure um I see the opportunities in both and for example for the for MOBA of course having people at home or people not allowed to live then means then they have to get things delivered and I'm sure that was for the benefit of all um how would I put it on demand um businesses so food alcohol uh I'd say even delivery of shopping and because nobody wanted to get into the public and interact with people so yes indeed that was an interesting perspective but we also have to look at it from the side that there was maybe less disposable income some people were a bit people who are a bit more um cautious about their spending and only spent on more essential rather than um how would I put it rather than uh leisure leisure because um at some point in time people held back their cash because they never knew what how it was going to be we were so uncertain we were still uncertain about the future yes but at that particular moment it was totally frightening it was frightening and we'd see people go to supermarkets and clear things and stock up and people who are really not spending discretionary uh on discretionary items but that trend definitely seems to be changing now the next thing from a security perspective it's been um it's a mix of blessings and all because as I mentioned we work in all these businesses are interrelated and so for example if you are a security company which deals majorly with clients who are in the hospitality industry in the airline business and such then maybe horticulture etc then you would be really adversely impacted because this clients are closing their businesses reducing their demand etc and for sure I know the finance people who are addressing such companies who are at hard terms to make sure that they create sustainability and resilience in those times but um on the flip side there was more demand for security in some instances where there was a rise in the insecurity maybe people are not at the offices and therefore you need security there or you're at generally those are feeling that hey there's an increased security risk because um yeah maybe unemployment and all that so from that perspective it also impacted on businesses which could take up the opportunities well on a on a different note uh would say from our business perspective right um we have a range of businesses so you say you're in cash business those less cash everybody was using impesa everybody wanted to you you don't want to tell it was called a disease vector well one time when cash was not a good thing anyway um so that tells you that was an impact um for people and um you needed to walk around that and ensure that you're able to weather the storm it's starting slowly to improve and that's something to look at think about um uh technical installation so you were talking about say you want to have a security setup in um in your large organization people are putting a lot of decision makers who are putting on hold high carpets um that's capital investment projects so you don't want to spend too much during this time because you don't know how long you'll survive so if somebody was how the markets are going to respond so exactly and people were cutting costs at that point in time so in that sense then um it it had an impact on the security industry and finally the the whole aspect about cutting cost then you some people for them security is an essential service but for some other people they consider it as a luxury and they say yeah right so all this came into play and um from a business perspective we had to look at this and we had to do a lot of agressive financial stress testing and planning to consider all these circumstances scenarios and our reaction to the materialization of any of them and so for my um what i do for the entrepreneurs here is that um yeah always be able as i talked about earlier to assess all the risks possible risk in your organization and plan accordingly okay yes so are some of the ways that you guys are planning to prepare for the future for the future which is actually uncertain in a situation whereby something like this would happen because i believe like uh being you know caught being you know getting just being gotten off guard so and i believe right now uh particular mitigation as a company you are actually putting up for the sake of the future okay interesting and i'd say common approaches to this is to uh first of all create and sure you have a buffer and that sometimes is it can be too late if you're thinking of coming up with a cash buffer um when the uncertainty has already happened so it's always something you want to do earlier um also two is to create um partnerships for financing if you feel that you will need financing um three is to cut on discretionary spending so that you can build resilience right and also four and i would say actually should have put it at number one is to assess the market and also identify the opportunities because in every bleak situation there's always some opportunities for how would i put this some great opportunities for business so for instance um what we've seen in the security industry is looking at creating screening material where everybody needs now at the moment at the entrance you need to ensure people are checked in different ways that's an opportunity for for the security industry um it's interesting just to step out you know for example people who manufacture alcohol move their production now to produce hands sanitizer you know right so it's it's about looking at the glasses half full rather than half empty so i think as much as you try and meet to get to the downside risk you want to look at the you really have to look at opportunities and be an optimist in this kinds of circumstances all right what couple of achievements that looking back when you started moba and where you are right now that you look back and you be like hmm that was an achievement wow interesting um i'd have to narrow them down to a few but i'd say um at that point in time i was pretty impressed um building a business from scratch and even being able to get meaningful partnerships with significant uh players in the industry and being able to deliver a service um yeah you know at the before that i never thought i could do that all right and two i'd say also um from my career perspective i think i've achieved decent growth and i've been able to make an impact in all the organizations i've worked with and particularly now at the SGA to be able to add value to all our stakeholders and builds to the um growth of that company is an achievement for me from a personal perspective speaking about growth you're still you're still building capacity taking it back to your business so what does the future look look like for joseph doko brilliant three years down the road how many years three three years three years three years down the road three years um i'd say three years down the road uh will still be building capacity i think there is a lot to be gained and a lot of impact to be improved and i'd like to actually um say that entrepreneurship is not something which you only do when you're outside employment when you are in employment you can choose to be an intrapreneur that's what they call it an intrapreneur and create solutions and the interesting thing about this perspective if your ideas are great they get more traction because of maybe capital backing and excellence in that sense so um i'm also not of us to the idea of intrapreneur excellence and um yeah being part of changing the landscape of the security industry at least through SGA you mentioned something very important i've had this countless number of times yes but by people who are in employment and when they retire that's like oh i need to start a business i need to be an intrapreneur but you just bring it across that it's not something that you do after yes actually very good so that is the time we had which you just said they were looking at corporate governance in security industry how can people reach out to you if they want to you know keep up having conversation with you and do you have any new projects coming up maybe business ideas or any company you're studying up you never know you never know um indeed um i'd say for sure you you never know i've definitely been scoping for market gaps and as i said i'm thinking global and global solutions and hence my approach and to it regards to my um how you can access me um you can access me on LinkedIn through uh my profile is joseph thuku and also um you could also reach me through from a security perspective um to through jay thuku at sga security dot com okay thank you very much joseph joseph for creating time uh for us to have this conversation i'm looking forward to having you over again and this time round i will maybe we'll be talking about a new company which is just started thank you so much it is a pleasure being here too and i look um i'm meant to those um wishes absolutely okay so guys back at home make sure okay sorry make sure you stay tuned for another conversation coming up uh we'll be sampling your comments here on the question of the day so make sure you stay tuned i'll be right back on more on entrepreneurship Tuesday on why in the morning at michela shirei so you can find me across all my social at y254 channel so you can find us across all our social media handle so make sure you don't don't touch that dial i'll be right back