 Hashtag entrepreneurship Tuesday right here on why in the morning at Y254 channel is so you can find us across all social media platform at Michelle Ashira is where you can reach out to me remember we have a question on our facebook page it's all about that calling story on to hear your calling story happened in business well and good i just want to hear that story so share your stories at Y254 channel that's our facebook page so in this particular session we're getting into an interview it's all about obtaining energy optimization in business and in studio i am with Dennis Kaguake who is the founder of Creos Holding Limited thank you very much Dennis for creating time to be with us thank you for hosting me all right you look dashing thank you likewise i appreciate it thank you very much so before even getting into matters pertaining energy optimization in business i would like to find out just a little bit of a background of who Dennis Kaguake is okay um Dennis Kaguake is an enthusiastic human being all right uh was born in Kikuyu constituency in award called Sigona i am my parents are environmentalist so somehow they had an influence on my career path um i am a mechanical engineer by training you don't say yes and graduated from the university jamukena to university of agriculture and technology in 2015 yeah so i am most already started uh graduate engineer with engineers board of kenya and certified energy manager okay uh i've noticed you mentioned something about your parents are getting influenced if you uh getting into this particular energy industry that you're in right now but when did you discover that you're actually passionate about this and it's something that you can pursue so it was um during my third year of study and uh that's when you start specializing in some units and i have found that i had a lot of interest in some of the units mainly um energy management and renewable energy so by the time i was getting into my final year i had known that that i had actually decided that my career is going to be on energy so with that particular influence now in retrospect reflecting back i realized that a lot of my upbringing had a lot of influence on my career choice um i wasn't i wasn't told which cost to do i had a lot of uh freedom to make my decision but in retrospect considering that my parents are in in in environment the kind of primary school i went to we planted a lot of trees like environmental protection was indoctrinated in me uh from a very young age so by the time that i'm choosing that career i felt like it was a call yeah uh it's only that by that time that's when i was hearing the voice i didn't hear it as a child oh what type of a student were you in high school what type of student yeah considering you say like your parents it felt like your parent growing up and you've actually mentioned it there was a lot of freedom of choice they give you that space so you could make decision and make your own mind yeah so i went to a seminary actually and joining the seminary you'd always everybody would think that you're going to become a priest but it's it's that background of the seminary that really helped me hone on um what i'd want to be in my life afterwards there was a lot of career guidance back at high school um the kind of mentors that we had the relationships that we formed back then still till date we still have such bonds with most of my classmates back from high school and schoolmates so i would say that back back back in high school i was just an ordinary guy i hadn't known that things were going to turn out the way they did afterwards yeah yeah but the decisions about even the choices that i made in terms of higher education were very guided by my teachers and my relatives yeah yeah what would you say there were like top three principles that you gathered while still in the seminary school that actually it had it played a role in shaping you into the business person you are today i would say the motto the school motto which i have never forgotten which is excellence in mind and spirit so the the main value of that particular motto was since it's a seminary we all understand that matter spirituality are very focal but at the same time it's also a school so you need to learn so i realize that the balance between the mind and the spirit basically makes you the let's say the whole body stable this is in regards to if your mind is stable and your spirit is stable things like uh bad health um issues with your body they are not going to be there okay yep yep interesting so yeah um i would just say that okay why didn't you turn out to be a priest we should get that as a story for another day right so you worked as an energy audit and an energy manager for five years so what led you to resigning just teaching your resignation and go on to the world and start something of your own into the from the into the energy industry that is um it's a good question for me it was then the gap that we didn't identified in the industry back then so there was a law that had been formulated back in 2012 that necessitated industries that consume around 180 000 units per year to conduct that energy audit every three years so the first cycle of the first three years was in 2015 and there was a huge rush for complying to that law but when when organizations were taking up these services they were not following through they were not following through with whatever was recommended in these reports so we found out that probably it's because the reports are too technical to understand there's need for guidance and all that so that's when we decided okay let's address that gap let's not just be energy auditors let's also help them implement these recommendations and so that they can realize the savings that were recommended from the on the audit okay all right um when you moved okay now you have the confidence to start something of your own did you have savings prior or how did you raise your initial capital uh i did not have any savings uh i considered a service service service business is basically you selling yourself absolutely so it's not you are the product so if if you know that your value then people are going to pay for that value so started as consultancy and it was it was kind of a very let me not say a smooth transition because it had taken a very long time for me to get my first client like almost like six months okay yeah so it was not until i got my first client that i realized this can actually happen so i think in business you either trade your time or your money for me i traded my time yeah because i did not have the money back then all right you spoke about something which is very important that it was quite uh it took time for you to get your first client how did you go about that and how did you get your you know your first client and the process of networking in the energy industry yeah it's good you asked that because um that that networking i think was the most valuable thing for me starting out so in the course of employment you meet so many people you meet managers you meet technicians and these are the people that we deal with in day to day business so sometimes when they change organizations they are always looking for you like um we did we did such a uh a process in the form organization now i'm in this new organization can you come and help us out and i'll be like yeah i'm happy to do that in fact i started my own venture so they'll be like oh okay that's nice so when we meet up um basically it's just through the referral of one person knowing another person like that like that okay apart from uh struggling to get your first client initially what are some of the challenges that you faced during the probably first year of studying your own business um my first year of business was basically trying to come up with a team because since since this business is governed in law there's a lot of compliance issues there are people who cannot um do the kind of work that i do and if and if they do it um it's not going to come out professionally uh as compared to say somebody who doesn't have the necessary or the requisite compliance certificates these are basically license from the energy and petroleum regulatory authority so since i did not have that license back then um i would look for collaborators so and these collaborators included maybe the licensed auditors uh some licensed technicians and all that and sometimes it would eat into the margins so we hadn't gotten into we hadn't really learnt our business model very well back then so sometimes you know there's a difference between uh making money and running a business for us it was about making money but as we proceeded now we started learning that um we should now run a business yes it should have uh such functionalities HR um finance it should always be kept on record should be all structured exactly exactly so but that that came later and we had no prior background in business like even even small small households but this this particular um opportunity of running our our company is Krius holdings we decided that we need we need to have this structure in place if we want to grow the business the way we envision it five years ten years from now good for someone who is watching this maybe probably a young person wants to get into business maybe to be different other industries and they have this particular idea and they just want to implement it but they're also thinking the aspect of want to get into this for the money you know on a bag real quick especially for the micro generation so what would be your advice and on how you carb that challenge of not having captured the proper modeling of your business the whole structure on it um my advice is just start and follow through yes uh there's there's a everybody wants to start something but and we have this glamorous um perspective of entrepreneurship but it's the things that go on in the background the boring stuff writing proposals um feeling those spreadsheets on your finances which majority never go through exactly so uh that that is where the real work is that is where the real work is um so for for for somebody who wants to start a business and stuff and stuff like that start and follow through hoping and praying that that is something that they really are passionate about yes because if you're passionate about something then and your discipline then you definitely will persist towards your breakthrough right exactly exactly right so that's our journey all right so let's get into kriyo's uh holding so what do you guys do in details in detail i'm pleased i just picture like you're talking to a three year old person yeah so basically we help organizations businesses and home owners reduce their energy costs so this way they are able to increase their profitability reduce the operational costs and still protect the environment um i hope you understand the difference i mean the interaction between energy and the environment okay yeah so for example uh if you're using diesel generators to generate our electricity it means that there's more pollution from the diesel pollution exactly so but the good thing about our country now a lot of our sources are renewable but the same time uh energy is also is also is also not becoming cheap for us so there is the aspect of the environment there's also the aspect of the finance and there are there's so many benefits towards energy optimization so this optimization services basically include um energy auditing where we investigate areas of energy waste in your environment and then uh we upsell you on the energy management service packages which are basically four uh there's a business package an economy package a premium package and a custom package and all and finally we help you implement the energy conservation measures and track the savings for you and we also train you on how to be energy conservative so basically how we are able to differentiate ourselves from the rest is we are very human centered and we are cost effective um when you say cost effective i don't mean cheap i mean that we are able to manage your finance or how you finance those energy conservation measures okay so probably take us briefly on your packages that you've mentioned the four different packages just briefly okay so we have an economy package um like i said we are very human centered and cost effective so the economy package is our base package whereby it's very uh labor intensive so we attach an energy engineer to your organization who helps you track and maintain records of your energy consumption then we have a business package which which is the one that we highly recommend for our clients to take it involves a lot of equipment for monitoring um real time monitoring equipment whereby you can even get information about your energy consumption from your phone um we leverage on technology like IoT the internet of things so that we can take all those measurements then we have a premium package so if you're looking to get an ISO certification uh like like there is ISO 9001 for quality management but there is also another one for energy management ISO 5001 you want to be recognized globally as a sustainable business that your business has a very little carbon footprint we offer you the premium package but the final one now the custom package is whereby some features of different packages you've already implemented okay but there's some you have not so we go into a co-creation process you tick out the features that you want in your package and then uh from there we can generate a quotation for you on how uh we can build on that package uh this service is just based on business owner so uh you guys can help our people back at home so actually it's during this COVID-19 that we started really focusing on uh home owners yes uh before we're focusing a lot on on on businesses and organizations actually mainly we're focusing on uh the agricultural industry and the hotel industry but uh the agricultural industry specifically flower farmers how about manufacturing um we had we were not going into that area yeah yeah we felt like um the hospitality industry and uh the flower the flower industry was quite underserved okay and also that is where most of my experience was your initials yes yes exactly all right let's look at uh i'd like to find out how does your day look like just to have a glimpse of uh uh your working day okay so the first thing i do is check on uh the reports okay energy management reports um whereby i'm able not to analyze our clients consumption on a daily basis and send them the reports if there are any anomalies note them down and then we follow up with the client because um leveraging on the that technology the IoT has really reduced and that is basically comes with our business package reduces our involvement with the clients so we can have a client in Eldorette, Mombasa and here in Nairobi knowing how much they are consuming and since we are very collaborative like i said human centered we really collaborate with our clients um staff basically their technicians their maintenance engineers and stuff like that we give them these reports then after that check our finances the books and everything and then right like right now we've been really working in the background to now take our business from emails just emails and phone calls to our serious online presence through social media um a functional website and all that basically that's what we've been working on the past few months yeah so uh i would like to find out the number or probably you can just mention the number of the team from kriyo's holding and how are you guys holding up during this time of COVID-19 so starting out in 2020 we're going through a new transition now we had even shifted our offices from from Westlands to Kenyatta University and we're looking to expand so before we were we were four full-time employees and two part-time employees but at the moment we've reduced to two yeah basically because a lot of a lot of the roles that some of our staff are taking we have now taken them up yeah so that basically means our business development and engineering those are the only things that are still structured in the company at the moment being run by the two of us but before we was looking at other functions like HR finance in fact we'd even delegated the business development roles so that now we can work on um but uh greater partnerships we're even working on a different product so that uh at least we we can diversify our offerings yeah but come mid-march when we were hit went home had after after three months let one person go then the next month now in in July the the final person left uh so the people that are working with us right now yes I think it's it's just been tough yeah COVID-19 has hit really hard even from all industries yeah it's just all rounded and we're just adapting to the new to the new norm yes so let's look up prior to COVID-19 is this a lucrative business or does it take way too long to make money you know then at the end of it all it's all about you just making profits so I think it's a very lucrative business I would advise I think we are underserved here in Kenya and looking even at how do you think that they are about less than 100 auditors or they are about in the country but the the number of people that need to be served by law are about and these are just the businesses are about 3000 to 4000 so if you look at the number of service providers versus the industry I think we are underserved number two is the jobs that come afterwards because now that's just auditing but not the jobs that come afterwards so you want to implement say an efficient lighting you want to implement solar you want to implement biogas you want to implement efficient equipment there is where the real money is and from from from our research we believe that it's an industry that can generate around two billion shillings annually in revenue so that's two billion for all of us about the same time we are looking at savings of about almost a billion shillings from just implementing those measures so not only do we reduce our costs but we also show initiative to the region to the continent and to the world that we are actually focused on sustainability yeah so there is a lot going on in that area back in 2018 the government seek to tap cold power in Lamu and the Lamu people were so much against it and I would like to find out they talked to us about the quality of power and how how safe is the is cold when it comes to just you know how safe is it and is it clean there's a statement I've been hearing recently there's nothing like clean cold but I believe technology is really helping us achieve that for me I'm all about sustainable energy clean energy so I think as a country we have we are really moving forward we're really moving forward to achieving that because right now I think our energy mix is around almost 90 percent renewable yeah we have geothermal we have wind we have hydro which has been there for a very long time so the quality in terms of environmental impact is is quite good the problem now comes with the cost yeah everybody thinks that since renewable energy is free energy free energy yes you'll tell us why you put it in quotes because everybody thinks that this is free energy our electricity should be cheap but we fail to remember that there's a lot of investment that has gone into it and one way or the other that investment has to come back yeah so I believe that the cost of electricity should be coming down sooner but from from a profit point of view it's not coming down anytime soon okay so the cost of energy in the country especially for manufacturers is quite very high how can we tame the prices so for starters actually the new energy act 2019 it's giving a lot of freedom for people to actually generate their own energy sources um in fact there's even uh one of the most exciting things about that energy act for me was something called net metering whereby you hear michelle uh i'm not even considering that you're a manufacturer just in fact for manufacturers it's way cheaper the electricity costs are way cheaper than for you are domestic users you find out our big big manufacturers are doing say 15 shillings per unit but you in your house you're doing around 25 shillings that's a very huge difference yeah yeah but why is that um economy is of scale so since they're going to be consuming more they are sold for cheaper but since you are using less and we have to like somehow they have to levelize the field uh you're you're you're charged more so this new energy act uh i was talking about something called net metering you're here you have a solar panel in your house of course nobody's in your house right now so you'll find out probably now what is that solar panel doing and i'm not even using that electricity even if i had a battery but with that this new law uh when you're here you're able to sell back power to the grid and maybe when the utility provider is kenya power so at the end of the month instead of you getting a bill you you you get a bill and you also issue a bill then you do the difference and then whoever has charged or whoever has used more electricity than the other is the one who gets paid so if your if your house generates more electricity than you consume you actually paid for it uh regulations are still being uh developed around that it's something that industry players have been really fighting for and post culminated in the energy act 2019 so there are great great opportunities out there for energy cost reduction for both manufacturers and domestic users okay so what is kriya's holding uh due to cut down the cost of energy if we come to you probably it's a business owner and how are you guys going to help us out when it comes to cutting our cost on energy so uh we first of all try to understand you because uh there are there are five five steps of of uh our human centered approach we come we empathize with you what is your major frustration is it the cost of electricity is it compliance is it um sustainability so whichever the case we know how far we are going to go with you so if your case is cost and uh most people that swear they are really paying at um we come and tell you okay can you conduct an energy audit for your facility we come investigate areas of energy waste um then we measure and then we recommend energy conservation measures in a report we tell you that um uh you're wasting uh you're wasting around 200,000 shillings from not doing one two three so can take a case study of say let's say even a room like this okay a room like this come and tell you is this lighting enough because everybody has their own standards for example a studio is its own standard for lighting absolutely so we'll we'll ask you um do you think the lighting is enough if it's enough okay then we start taking measurements of the technology we're using for lighting okay so we'll tell you um do you need the heat from the light if you say no you just need the light then we tell you there's a lot of heat being generated by this type of light use this type of light it's going to save you this number of electricity per month so if you invest say 20,000 shillings you're going to return your money in say a year or two probably depending on the measure some measures are even instant just like that okay are measures like um uh from from my brief stay and on this set i notice that some some bulbs are off okay yeah so having some bulbs off something called delamping uh it's a good measure and cost you nothing to do that yes i feel like i'm in a classroom right now so much big informed yeah all right so what are some of the tips that we can probably use back at home for the guys who are watching and we we're actually losing too much of energy uh quite expensive when it comes to the cost what a couple of tips you can probably give us number one is just basic energy conservation so energy conservation is quite cheap basically that means now you are not wasting you're not being wasteful so you're moving from the kitchen to the living room to the bedroom and you're going leaving lights on number one uh that is not a good practice it has to start with yourself behavior change that is number one number two is start learning about now the different technologies that exist so um for example if your bulb burns out all right don't send your son or daughter with 40 bob to go and bring you a bulb why why not because it's that cheap yes but the time the kind of um cost it's going to uh run into your into your pockets it's not worth it to be honest because that bulb is going to burn out in very few hours of use and then number two it will have cost a lot of money to have it light your space because it consumes more energy cheap is expensive yes yes yes and then number three is always buy energy efficient equipment there are basic labels uh that denote energy efficient equipment okay all right all right so guys you've had all about energy conservation and how you can save couple of couple of money from just high costing too much wastage of energy i would like to find out a successful story whereby you were working with a particular client and they ended up saving way too much and they didn't expect that actually uh getting into you know seeking help on ways to just save on energy i would like to hear that story so uh there is a client um who back in 2016 their average bill was about three million shillings every month but as we speak today uh let me even just not speak of today let me speak of january pre kovid uh their bill was as low as 1.8 million 1.8 from 3 million from 3 million yes wow from 1.8 million right now they are doing about i think a million shillings okay uh but it's because of the reduced activity due to kovid but we still want to go further there is there is a major opportunity i don't know whether it is a very good platform for me to um air out this opportunity for anyone who would want to chip in okay um there is an opportunity to invest in such a kind of project for solar absolutely this is the right opportunity thank you so um there is an opportunity to invest in a solar project okay that is bound to make at least 300,000 to 600,000 in terms of savings yeah so if you want to chip in into that you can reach us at criosltd.com check our social media pages crios kenya facebook twitter uh instagram that's where and LinkedIn also we are very active there okay guys have heard it yeah so what is what's the vision of the company probably let's say five ten years down the road okay um um for us we are guided by the sustainable development goals uh number seven to be exact that is access to clean and affordable energy to all so we want you michelle to enjoy the benefits of the region that you live in this region is rich in renewable energy sources this region is rich in innovation and stuff like that we want you to access all that that that is our that is our vision for you to be able to use energy affordably and cleanly all right thank you very much denny's for creating time to be with us probably could give out uh give out your social media handles against of that people can reach out to you okay and get that investment opportunity so for me uh i'm i'm denny's karyuki on facebook LinkedIn twitter um on twitter on twitter i'm denny's karyuki like karyuki but uh for a company kreos kenya on facebook twitter linkedin instagram yes all right check out our website we have great content for energy conservation yes okay so there you have it denny's karyuki founder of kreos holding altitude matters pertaining energy optimization in business thank you very much for creating time thank you so much michelle all right we'll go back to uh enjoying good music and we'll be right back with another interview