Man at the helm of little-known listed Kurwitu

When news first broke of Kurwitu’s plans to list on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE), many potential investors had no clue about the company. Many could not pronounce the name correctly, placing a face to the names of its directors and their backgrounds was more difficult.

It was all a mystery despite plans to join the big guns at the bourse.

“People were wondering, what is Kurwitu?” says Abdulrahman Abdillahi, the Kurwitu managing director laughing.

The listing of Kurwitu Ventures Ltd on the NSE on November 13 thrust the company and its directors in the lime light. Kurwitu refers to an ancient lost town in Kilifi.

“At least now we don’t have to describe the company anymore when we are making introductions,” Mr Abdullahi said, who says he is not comfortable with the fame that has accompanied the listing. He didn’t expect it.

He now evades public glare by hiding behind Mohamed Hassan, his friend and chairman of Kurwitu and Abdul Hajji, a board member.

“I’m happy that Mohamed and Hajji are always the one in the media. This gives me opportunity to remain unknown,” he said.

He is the majority shareholder at Kurwitu with 51 per cent shareholding. This makes him richer of the two in paper terms, based on the share price of Sh1,250.

But he has made a decision to cut his stake by eight per cent to allow shareholders more say, hinting he does not like monopoly of ideas, neither does he want to bulldoze investors. Such a step would also help him to inject integrity in the company.

A chartered financial analyst, the CEO is, however, not using the much coveted title.

“Why should I use it? I’m not looking for a job as such. Even so, why should I pay to hold the title? When I first did it, there was no rule on fees. They introduced it when I was doing my CFA third level,” he said.

To retain the title, Mr Abdullahi is required to pay Sh20,000 annually, “good money” that he says goes to waste while it can be used to pay school for a needy student somewhere.

“Maybe that is petty change in America. But for me it’s a lot of money,” says Mr Abdullahi, a man who learnt early in life what he wanted and has often worked hard to achieve it despite hurdles. Born in Kilifi in 1968, Mr Abdullahi attended Shariani Primary School, a village school whose windows, more often than not, served as doors for it had no glasses.

“It was good in case of a fire.”

He came to Nairobi for high school before enrolling at National Youth Service (NYS) for a three-month training, a stint he says was a waste of time, since the tough training has not helped to go past the many hurdles of life in his quest to achieve goals.

But at Kenyatta University, life was better but the big-size classrooms made it “difficult to stand out. You would get good marks in continuous assessment tests (CATs) but score Cs in exams. It was discouraging.”

However, students were rich, living a lavish life lifestyle on the Sh5,040 government stipend that was known as ‘boom’.

“We were rich students,” he says.

Life after college was rough, with only two of his classmates landing employment. This forced him to risk his life to work for a year in the war-torn Somalia for Oxfam, an international charity. Life was good. “I earned good salary and spent nothing, opting instead to save for education abroad.”

He applied and joined Texas A & M in US for a Master’s in Finance, which he funded on his own and supplemented by working as a janitor, among other odd jobs, some he resigned from when he came face to face with death operating a machine at a processing firm.

After graduating, he moved to New York City to kick-start his career in finance, but employers gave him a cold shoulder. “Having a Master’s degree and being a foreigner with a funny looking name didn’t help,” he says. He survived on temporary employment for a year as he did his CFA courses.

Mr Abdullahi passed his CFA level one and landed first job as junior analyst with a fund manager, where he worked for three years to gain experience before relocating in 2001 to Dubai and Abu Dhabi to work for what was to be their first investment bank. However, the company folded due to frustrations about licensing. He came back home.

He invested his savings in a farming venture but closed down because it was undercapitalised. While tsetse flies attacked his improved Boran bulls, one of his camels died from a snake bite. But he soldiered on and founded Kurwitu after a stint at Dyer & Blair Investment Bank.

“I always wanted to be an entrepreneur rather than be comfortable waiting for a salary,” he said.

He worked for a year and he handed it over. He went on to set up a research unit again as the head of research and general manager. He was once again called in to help the company create a corporate finance unit. Here he would work alongside Mr Mohammed.

“It paid off. I got what I thought was enough to allow me to start the business (Kurwitu),” he said. However, most of the business he got didn’t tie in with Kirwitu objectives. This made Kurwitu idle as he opted to use other companies.

In 2012 those companies began to attract a lot of interest from clients from Dubai and the Arab world. But they lacked the vehicle to carry out the lucrative business deals, thoughts that made them see the big picture of using Kurwitu, a dormant company founded in 2006 by Mr Abdullahi with a loss of over Sh800 million.

They consolidated assets and went for opportunity provided by GEMs segment at the bourse reserved for small companies.

Mr Abdullahi says the high share price was a strategic move since he wanted to be professional as hedge funds do by including public participation. He has set aside at least two years to make more losses as they inject more capital investment on feasibility studies and build on products with plans to raise Sh100 million from internal sources.

“We should start making profit from 2016,” Mr Abdullahi said.

[email protected]