SME Clinic launched to ease business processes

Wylde International is looking to reduce the cost of doing business for small enterprises to boost the country’s SME sector.

The firm yesterday launched an SME Clinic that will act as a one-stop-shop, providing business development services for small entrepreneurs.

“We have collaborated with like-minded consultants to form an innovative ecosystem that can serve as a one-stop-shop for entrepreneurs,” Wylde International founder and managing director Joram Mwinamo said during the launch.

Other than poor access to credit, small business owners in the country face challenges including low access to new markets, investment readiness and the lack of capacity and technical know-how on setting up systems necessary for growing their business.

Data by the Central Bank of Kenya shows about 46 per cent of Small Medium Enterprises in Kenya close within a year of founding, and another 15 per cent in the year after that, unable to solve business-related challenges.

This, despite the sector driving Kenya's economy constituting of about 98 per cent of all the businesses in the country and accounting for more than 30 per cent of the country's GDP. 

Mwinamo said the SME Clinic will be looking to tackle these challenges by putting together business development service providers in one space to not only reduce operational costs incurred by SMEs but create ease of doing business.

“We see two levels of challenges facing businesses with regards to access to business development services, the need for the service and the inability to pay for it,” he said.

Small business owners will benefit from access to 17 domain experts including Strategy, Finance, Legal, Human Resource Management, Process mapping, Marketing, Sales, Branding, Customer Service, Debt Collection, ICT, and Automation, all under one roof.

They will also access training for their employees on soft and hard skills, access to a network of peers as well as exposure to other ecosystem actors including investors.