Friday, March 29, 2024

HOW I HAVE MANAGED TO OWN $1 MILLION FIRM AT 28

For many people especially the youth, starting their own business is a
monumental task; and Trushar Khetia, the founder and the CEO of Tria Group,
agrees with this.

This is mainly due lack of capital and sometimes owing to the fear of the
unknown; Will make it or lose out?

But at the age of 28, Khetia, who got married two years ago, has managed to
own his company, whose core business is to display adverts of various
companies’ products on buses, both inside and outside.

“The early bird catches the worm,” he says during an interview with Capital FM
Business, “When you start working on a business idea early, it means you start
failing early and you start learning things early. So, get all the failures
off your way by the time your 30;35. So then you will succeed early.”

Tria Group, which is now worth over $1 million (Sh90 million), did not just
happened, he says, “it has taken a lot of risking and self confidence.”

Having started with only one client a little over a year ago, the company now
operates within 5 to 10 clients a month, who have bought the idea of having
their products displayed on ‘moving billboards.’

The adverts displayed on the buses can be on the either sides or the rear
while inside the vehicle, the adverts are put on the seat covers or on panels.

“Our niche within media is on transit media. It’s about advertising on the
move. So we are purely dealing with buses only. It is a very specific niche
and the whole point is, it is one area that has lacked serious competition
because it is still untapped and this means that the opportunity to grow is so
immense,” he says.

For Khetia, money is not so core in starting any business; but a proper
strategy, understanding what problem the business will solve and how the
solution will finally bring in money.

Above all you must believe that you will succeed.

“People have to understand that we all have to start somewhere and somewhere
small first. I would say for a start, don’t even invest any money you have on
things that would not directly lead to sales. I mean you don’t even need an
office to start. Understand your idea and its uniqueness.”

So how did he come up with this idea?

“It actually started when I was 19, while in university in the UK. Being
abroad, the only form of transport to go anywhere was public transport, going
to campus and back. And this is what made me realise how big transit media can
be. Because every single bus, the taxis, the underground trains, the tubes, I
mean, all of them were carrying Ads, inside and outside,” Khetia recalls.

“So whenever I would come back home to Kenya, I would look at the fact that we
would have the same if not, worse traffic level than London, or Manchester.

And I thought, Kenya is the perfect place to do transit media, because people
are actually stuck in these buses ‘all day’, morning and evening.”

Send your story for publishing to: [email protected]

SourceCapitalfm

Connect With Us

320,546FansLike
14,108FollowersFollow
8,436FollowersFollow
1,880SubscribersSubscribe

Latest Stories

Related Stories