This Morning I had a close Interview with the founder and CEO of Aloyo Electronics a Ugandan electronics manufacturing company, whose sole mission is to create electronic devices at very low cost.
Mugega who dropped out of school in Senior Four (S.4) talked to me about his brief background and how in just four years of starting his electronics company is on a path of building the next big electronics manufacturing and assembling plant in the district of Luwero. Here is the close interview with Mr Mugega Nasur.
Tell me a bit about yourself and how you started Aloyo Electronics.
I was born in Mbale but I lived and studied in Gulu until 2010, when I finished my Senior 4 I came to Kampala to visit a friend of mine. As someone who had grown up upcountry I was thrilled to see a city which had more than 6 Million people and I knew that if I started something for these people, there is no way I was going to be broke. I asked a few people about what I could start-up in Kampala and someone told me to look for a big problem that was affecting me and work on that. At the Meantime the problem back in Gulu was electricity, I could even fail to charge my phone sometimes which wasn’t the case of Kampala.
So how did you solve this problem?
Back in the village I used to ride a bicycle which used a dynamo to light the bulb, so I thought If the cycling motion produced electricity then If I connected my phone, It would also get charged, If you have worked with electricity you very much know how my story ends. Long story short I blew up my phone because I was directly exposing it to Alternative Current. I got to learn from this problem, I started to look for ways of regulating current and I started learning about electronic components one by one until I finally figured out how to produce regulated power that can actually charge my phone.
Are there some success stories in your company?
Yes, very many actually because I started with nothing when I was starting this company and right now we have grown and actually acquired a big piece of land in Luwero where we are setting up our factories. As I earlier said I started with making phone chargers for bicycles and expanded to motorcycles and some of our clients are using tracking systems which we manufacture to track their consumer products in the market.
Where do you see your Company in the next 20 years?
In 20 years we expect to have finalized our manufacturing plant and we shall be the “New China for Africa”. We are positioning ourselves to be the leading manufacturers of inexpensive electronic devices on the African continent.
What is your advice to start-ups in Uganda today?
Like I told you I started with nothing, no seed funding and am building a consistent business, I didn’t have any knowledge about the industry at first but I had a passion that if I solved this problem very well and inexpensively, I would tap into a very big market in Uganda. I have also worked very hard on my plans and am seeing them come to pass. So my advice to start-ups in Uganda is that they need to focus on solving the problem first and then if the problem is viable, the money will come. Just work on your work plan.
