Azym Dossa, who last week stepped down as the chief executive officer of Easy Coach, a company he founded 21 years ago, is undoubtedly a man of means.
As his company's balance sheet has expanded over the years, so has Mr Dossa's bank account. Surely, he can afford to spoil himself with the finest things in life, such as the latest Range Rover. Not Dossa.
The 76-year-old father of two is content with his nine-year-old Jeep Cherokee, he revealed in an interview in August 2023.
“But we have 80 buses on the road. And we are getting seven more this month, with 10 more set for December [2023],” said Mr Dossa. After 20 years of managing Easy Coach, Mr Dossa has made the hard decision of exiting the corner office of the bus company, citing health challenges.
“This has not been an easy decision. However, given my recent health challenges associated with advanced age, I am of the opinion that this is the right time for me to step down. The directors and shareholders of the company have kindly acceded to my request,” Mr Dossa said in a memo to the Easy Coach staff.
“While I am stepping down from the executive, I will remain closely connected to Easy Coach and will continue to offer my guidance and support to the company,” he added.
Mr Dossa cut his teeth in long-distance travel at the defunct Akamba, where he worked as a chief finance officer.
He has skilfully guided Easy Coach evolution from a small bus company plying one route of Nairobi to Kisumu, to a reputable bus company with a fleet of over 800 buses. The secret to success is discipline and professionalism.
Rather than inflating his menu of personal chattels like luxury cars and houses, he is obsessed with expanding his business empire. Easy Coach has survived because it has always been innovative. It is, for example, the first long-distance bus company to embrace online booking, which is sweet music to the ears of its core customers: The middle class.
For an industry that has never known kind words from the public due to its roguishness, Easy Coach has cut a singular image of trust and reliability. Like the matatu industry, good customer service was alien to the long-distance buses when Mr Dossa plunged into the business in 2003.
The Narc administration was just coming to power when Mr Dossa decided to return to Kenya from Canada to plunge into entrepreneurship.
Narc’s business-friendly policies resulted into an economic resurgence that spawned a horde of middle-class population, who had no qualms about spending an extra dime on convenience and comfort.
Save for a few long-distance bus companies like Akamba, not many of them catered to the middle-class taste of spacious, airy and comfortable. Professionalism was an anathema to most of the buses at Machackos Country Bus Station, where it was not unusual for some ‘manamba’ to disappear with passengers’ luggage.
Thus, most middle-class travelers were forced to use their personal cars or budget airlines, when traveling to the countryside to avoid the gruffiness of the buses. But this was expensive.
Mr Dossa sought to change this. His passengers were going to receive VIP treatment. He was the first to create a lounge for the passengers so that they could wait for their bus after booking.
He also introduced toilets, ending the embarrassing rituals of passengers sneaking to the bushes to relieve themselves.
Those booking their buses at Machackos Bus Station, would wait for hours until the bus was full. But Mr Dossa introduced the discipline of the clock. The bus would leave at an appointed time and have very few stops along the way except at designated areas.
In return, customers kept coming back, despite him charging a little higher than the competition.
“I always charged five percent above market rate,” he said in an early interview.
To travel from Nairobi to Kisumu, Easy Coach charges Sh1,750. Other companies, such as those in Machackos Country Bus, can charge as low as Sh1,200.
Direct competitors like The Guardian and Ena Coach charge Sh1,650 and Sh1,600 respectively for the same route.
In the interviews he has given in the past, Mr Dossa likes to insist on the fact that he started the company from scratch. The scratch was three buses and 30 employees.
Over the years, he has admirably steered the company to greater heights while skillfully skirting the traps that have felled most family-owned buses in Kenya, and more than tripled the number of businesses and expanded the routes, even beyond the border like in Sirare, Tanzania.
From Modern Coast to Akamba, the long-distance transport sub-sector has been a graveyard of unfulfilled dreams. But Mr Dossa has kept his 20-year dream alive, multiplying the three buses he started with to over 800.
The routes plied by his buses have also expanded from the initial Nairobi-Nakuru-Kisumu. He now has over 900 employees whose work is to ensure that people and cargo move smoothly around the country.
The converted passengers would also entrust Easy Coach with their assets. Today, about 20 percent of Easy Coach’s business is cargo, with the company moving goods worth millions every day.
It is not just transport business that Mr Dossa is good at, he will also be celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary on August 25, which means he can also offer lifelong lessons about what it takes to stay longer in marriage: It is a give-and-take affair, he said. “However, the model is changing. The roles are reversing. Nowadays, you have to give more, and the wife takes more,” he said.
Succession might prove a headache for Mr Dossa. He suggested in the earlier interview that his two sons are more into Medicine and so far have not warmed up to the idea of joining the business.
While this means the business gets to avoid the fate of most family-owned businesses like Akamba, which have been felled by sibling rivalry, it denies Mr Dossa an apparent heir to his estate. He seems to be on course to avoid Akamba’s fate--though Akamba lasted 55 years.
Akamba was started in the 1950s following the merger with Commercial Bus Company, Makueni Bus Company and Western Bus Company. It is considered as East Africa’s oldest public transport company, largely because it was run professionally.
But things took a turn for the worse when one of its founding directors, Sherali Nathoo, died in 2000. His shares in the firm were split between his biological sons and their step-mother.
The power tussle between the two factions, coupled with debts and poor management, would eventually sink the company.
Mr Dossa would be keen to avoid such an eventuality by investing on corporate governance. While he was the CEO, the company was run by a board of directors, who ensured that decisions made were for the good of the company and shareholders.
Meanwhile, Mr Dossa who says he had many suitors who wanted to buy him off, might as well reconsider the offers as part of a retirement package.
