Entrepreneur
Name
Longinus
Member since
September 2017
On-time repayments
81 installments • 42%
About Me
My name is Longinus Nyongesa Masinde from Kenya, Bungoma County, Kantuyi constituency. I was born on 9th June 1992. I started schooling in the year 1997 in a primary school that was 2kms away from our home, it was never easy as we used to cover this distance daily while surviving on a one meal Everyday. Life continued to be tough throughout My primary education. On 12th November 2005 I sat for my Kenya certificate of primary education (Kcpe), I passed well to join secondary school but early 2006 my father passed on forcing me to repeat Primary (Std 8) and thereafter things worsened as dad was our breadwinner, I deed my Kcpe again 2006 and joined Secondary in the year 2007 though life was hard as most of my time in secondary school i spent on the road looking for school fees, by the grace of God i was able to complete my secondary education in the year 2010 though with a urge fee balance. At this point my focus was now to make ends meet come rain come sunshine, I moved away from our home to a place where I could see my dreams come true ( current place where I stay) there it was hard to adopt to the new environment as I was just fresh from high school, according to the market research I carried on that market I notice that they totally lacked a place where school going children could acquire school I teams, I decided to set up a small bookshop though what I had in my pocket was only 40 us dollars which I had been saving and that was just only enough to pay a rent of one month, despite the fact that I lacked a starting capital I did not give up and therefore I had just to pay for the shop as I new I had to secure that shop first because of its location, because of many challenges I ended up being exploited by the women around so as to be able to get something to pay the rent, at one point i started eve selling mandazi and teaching a near by kindergarten, I continued to fight with life hard enough and remained focused. Luckily enough through hard work and commitment in my business by the year 2013 May i was able to raise something to clear my school fees to pick my certificates there immediately i applied for a chance from Kenyatta University to pursue Bachelor of Arts, through bursaries i have managed to complete my training and because of high population and lack of Jobs i decided to go back to my business as i believe this is where lies.
My Business
I deal with bookshop which mostly sale stationeries and also offers some of computer services which includes typesetting and photocopying. These goods and services are of essential to pupils and students hence they are highly on demand. I decided to run such businesses after market research where I noticed that there were so many schools around the region but there was no bookshop to serve the community around there I decided to put up a bookshop to help and shorten the distance whereby members used to cover long distance before acquiring the same, there were products that were highly on demand after market research. My daily cost is at USD 100 dollars per month and revenue is at USD 60 per year. I usually make a profit of USD 140 since demand is high but low stock. Out of this 60% usually goes on food, rent and other basic needs, 20% on school fees and the remained on improving business.
Loan Proposal
Since there is a high demand of photocopying machine and printing because of many schools around and being approached by most of teachers who are my bookshop customers to include photocopying machine in my business to serve them, I will use my loan to purchase Ricoh MP 171 Photocopier machine which costs 300 US dollars and a computer which costs 130 US dollars. This will increase my daily sales and services since I will be also customer of my own business which is the bookshop where I will acquire printing materials since I have already tenders to print exams to school and also it will help me to have Hong demand for photocopying papers will I will buy direct from my bookshop, I expect the profit collected to continue stocking my business and also acquire more computers, cheap pay school fees for my child and repay the loan back since I expect profit to increase from 13 us dollars to 25 US dollars per day.
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Loan Info
Project Type
Classic Loan
Disbursed amount
$408.00
Date disbursed
May 10, 2018
Repayment status
Late
Projected term
13 months
Lenders
Germany
Switzerland
United States
Jake Gibson and Beverly Picardo
San Francisco, United States
Vancouver, Canada
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