Tabitha Karanja Biography
Tabitha Karanja born as Tabitha Mukami Muigai Karanja is a Kenyan businesswoman, entrepreneur, and industrialist. She is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Keroche Breweries, the first large brewery in Kenya owned by a non-multinational company. Keroche accounts for 20% of Kenya’s beer consumption, as of October 2012.
After attending Kenyan schools, she took up employment in the Ministry of Tourism as an Accounting Clerk. Tabitha Karanja met and married her husband, who owned a successful hardware store in Naivasha town. In 1997, the couple closed the hardware store and went into the wine-making business
Tabitha Karanja Age
Karanja was born on August 29, 1964, in Kenton, Kijabe, Kenya. She is years 55 years old as 2019.
Tabitha Karanja Husband | Children
Tabitha is married to Joseph Karanja. The couple is a proud parent of four children; James Karanja ( serves as the Chairman of Keroche Breweries Limited), Anerlisa Muigai, Edward Muigai, and Tecra Muigai.
Tabitha Karanja Photo
Tabitha Karanja Career
Beginning in 1997, Tabitha and her husband, started making fortified wine, targeting the lower end of the market. In 2007, when the government enacted heavy taxes on locally made wines, her product was priced out of the market. She switched to manufacturing ready-to-drink gin and vodka, which her state-of-the-art factory still makes today. In 2008, she added beer to her repertoire of alcoholic drinks, beginning with a brand called “Summit”. In 2013, the factory began expansion plans to increase beer production from 60,000 bottles per day to 600,000 bottles per day. The refurbished plant, which cost KSh5 billion (US$55.5 million), was commissioned by Adan Mohammed, the Cabinet Secretary for Industrialisation, on 31 March 2015.
Tabitha Karanja, Keroche Breweries CEO
Tabitha Karanja, the founder and managing director of Keroche Breweries Ltd, has single-handedly run the company since its inception nearly 15 years ago as a small brewery. It is now a Ksh 1.5 billion ($17.6 million) turnover company with a growing local market share.
She has survived tough competition from East African Breweries and launched more brands after investing Ksh. 100 million ($1.2 million) in boosting production capacity. She is now seeking expansion in East and Central Africa and her dream is to cover the whole of Africa.
Tabitha Karanja Award
In 2010, she was honored by President Mwai Kibaki with a Moran of Burning the Spear (MBS) award for her great contribution to liberalizing Kenya’s alcohol market. Mrs. Karanja was born in Kenton, Kijabe.
Tabitha Karanja Profile
Tabitha Karanja ventured where few people before had dared, taking on a decades-long business monopoly and overcoming gender stereotypes to become a major player in her country’s lucrative drinks industry.
As chief executive of Keroche Breweries, Tabitha has paved the way for many other female entrepreneurs in Kenya, a country where women are traditionally scarce in the boardrooms, and even rarer in million-dollar startups.
Tabitha Karanja Photo
Against all odds, the 48-year-old entrepreneur has painstakingly turned the first Kenyan-owned brewery into a lucrative business. In the process, she had to succeed where others had tried and failed in the face of an entrenched monopoly: East African Breweries.
“People thought it was not possible to break the monopoly of the existing company that was there because it has been there for 80 years,” says Karanja, who launched her company’s first beer product, called Summit, in 2008.
“People thought it was normal for us to have only one company in this country,” she adds. “I was too determined and said ‘no’ — I have traveled many other parts of the world and I saw there is no country that had only one brewery; people had many choices so I said that I have to go forward and let the people decide.”
Karanja’s journey in Kenya’s drinks industry started in 1997 when she started a fortified wine business aimed at the lower end of the market. For the next 10 years, she came up against big names in Kenya’s wine industry, but in 2007, taxes imposed on alcohol manufacturing made it difficult to keep prices low.
Karanja says the hikes made her product too expensive for her target customers, forcing her to stop producing fortified wine. But instead of bowing out of the industry, Karanja came up with a new product.
“So there I thought again and said, ‘what do we do for this same market?’ And that is how we came up with ready-to-drink vodka. We make it ready-mixed to precision for moderate drinking,” she says. “Since then the market has always been opening up and has been growing into this new drink.”
Today, the company’s brand new, the state-of-the-art factory produces 10,000 bottles of gin and ready-to-drink vodka, as well as 15,000 bottles of beer, per hour. Although the company only holds about 5% of the country’s market share, Karanja says the demand for Keroche’s products outweighs the supply.
“Before the end of this year we laid the foundation stone of expanding the brewery to ten-fold of whatever we have now,” she says.
“The support of the Kenyans has kept me going all this time because I think that without their support it would have been very hard for anybody to continue doing the business,” adds Karanja. “If we support one another, we Kenyans, we Africans, we’ll be able to do even bigger than what the multinationals can do.”
Tabitha, a mother of four, says that startups are common in Kenya, but few survive the harsh business environment. She adds that it takes too long to start a business in Kenya, giving international competitors an advantage in the marketplace.
“There is a problem because they have not created an enabling environment to do business in this country,” she says.
As a successful entrepreneur in a typically male-dominated world, Karanja says the lack of female executives in her country and beyond is rooted in the way girls are often brought up.
“Even for a young girl all she thinks is to get married, get children to take care of the husband,” she says. “But if our culture can change that — ‘yes, you’ll get married, get your children, but also there is something else that you need to do: you need to develop your country in one way or the other.
“Women have always believed that it is men who are supposed to do that … so for me what we can do is challenge the women to think further and to believe that we can do even better than men.”
A model for aspiring young entrepreneurs across Kenya, Karanja’s business skills and efforts to liberalize the country’s industry were recognized in 2010 with an award from the president of Kenya.
“I felt good, not because of me, but because of our people here,” she explains. “I thought it would motivate the people, the Kenyans, and show them that even if you work very hard, struggle, meet all those challenges, at the end of it there’ll be somebody who will recognize you.”
Tabitha Karanja Twitter
Tweets by TabithaKaranja
Tabitha Karanja Video
Keroche CEO Tabitha Karanja arrested in Naivasha
Updated: AUGUST 22 2019
Owners of alcohol giant Keroche Industries Ltd Tabitha Karanja and her husband Joseph Karanja have been arrested in Naivasha after the brewer was accused of Sh14 billion tax evasion.
They were held after the Director of Public Prosecutions Noordin Haji Wednesday ordered their detention.
Detectives spent the day at the brewery’s entrance on Wednesday waiting to effect the order but the gates remained locked.
Ms Karanja is believed to have remained holed up in her office for more than 14 hours.
Speaking to the Nation on phone, Ms Karanja, who is also the chief executive, said the order of her arrest took her by surprise and that she only learnt about it through social media.
Sounding exhausted, she admitted having spent the night in the office as detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) kept vigil outside the factory.
“I have never been summoned by any of the agencies over the issue and I am surprised and shaken by the turn of events,” she told the Nation.
Mr Haji ordered the two to be presented in court to answer to 10 counts of tax fraud committed between January 2015 and June 2019.
Following the order, she released a statement in which she accused the DPP of “not acting in good faith by prosecuting a matter that was still under determination, thus undermining an institution obligated to handle such matters.”
She termed the tax bill slapped on the firm by the Kenya Revenue Authority, that has been engaged in long-running battles with the brewery, as being punitive.
JOB LOSS
Nakuru Governor lee Kinyanjui waded into the issue taking a swipe at the taxman and saying that there was need to protect local businesses.
“We must encourage a tax system that enhances compliance while appreciating the economic realities that businesses operate in. Ignoring this business reality, will lead to 100 percent compliance but leave half the industries closed,” he said on Wednesday.
He stated the Naivasha-based company was a major employer in the county and the country.
“While there may be tax matters that require redress, it would be an act of utmost betrayal to Kenyans who have built their businesses over the years, to be reduced to fugitives,” added Mr Kinyanjui.
He expressed fears that the brewery’s more than 500 employees and thousands others who are indirect beneficiaries may lose their jobs if the matter was not handled amicably.
“We must treat the owners of capital with caution otherwise we shall be staring at major job losses,” Mr Kinyanjui.
SUMMIT BEERS
Founded in 2009 and wholly owned by the Karanja family, Keroche started by making spirits and wines before diversifying into beer. It was the first ever Kenyan-owned company to brew beer which for a long time was the preserve of East African Breweries Limited (EABL).
As a result, Keroche’s Summit Lager and Summit Malt beers have for the past few years competed with products by Diageo’s East African Breweries, which enjoys a commanding lead with it popular Tusker brand.
The company has, however, in the past been engaged in long-running battles with KRA, over Sh1.3 billion backdated tax bills, which issued a shutdown order but the brewer obtained a court order stopping the closure.
In 2017, the Court of Appeal ruled, a decade-long Sh1.1 billion tax battle between the firm and KRA, in favour of the brewer.
The court ruled that the tax bill mainly related to most of the brewer’s products already in the market which Keroche had not factored in this development.
In 2015, when Keroche Breweries was shut down for days for alleged non-compliance on taxation, KRA demanded a backdated duty of about Sh1 billion for the ready to drink Vienna Ice vodka
The matter ended up in court.
Source: Daily Nation
Keroche CEO Tabitha, husband Karanja released on Ksh 12M cash bail
Keroche CEO Tabitha Karanja and her husband Joseph Karanja have denied charges of tax evasion after they were arraigned before Nairobi Chief Magistrate Francis Andayi.
Tabitha has consequently been released on a Ksh 15 million bond with a surety of a similar amount or a Ksh 10 million cash bail while her husband has been released on a Ksh 5 million bond with a surety of a similar amount or a Ksh 2 million cash bail.
Tabitha Karanja and Joseph Muigai Karanja were arrested by CID officers in their Naivasha offices on Thursday after allegedly spending the previous night in the offices to evade arrest.
The two were later driven to DCI headquarters in Nairobi following an order by the DPP to arrest them over tax evasion.
The two claim they are being targeted saying their arrest is not about tax but about their recently launched products, saying the truth will set them free.
On Wednesday, the DPP Noordin Haji issued orders to arrest a couple of failing to remit tax running into Sh14B from 2015 an allegation the company has denied.
The DPP noted that investigations revealed that the company evaded paying Sh12.34 billion Value Added Tax (VAT), Sh329.4 million for stamps and Sh135.4 million for Crescent Vodka among other products.
The forfeited payments on products include Vienna Ice- Quantity Variance Sh1.7B, Vienna Ice- Rate Variance Sh9B, and summit beers at Sh658m, Mr Haji said.
SOURCE: kbc.co.ke
More About Kenya
Kenya is a land of contrast – highlands and plains; wet and dry; rural and urban and people of all races. This offers many opportunities to citizens, foreigners, and visitors alike.
Here is more information about Kenya …
- About Kenya
- Tourism in Kenya
- Nairobi Kenya
- Towns in Kenya
- Health in Kenya
- Hotels in Kenya
- Kenya Safari Guide
- Farming in Kenya
- Government of Kenya
- Counties in Kenya
- Constituencies in Kenya
- Secondary Schools in Kenya
- Colleges in Kenya
- Universities in Kenya
- Kenya Business Directory
Welcome to Kenya. Welcome to Opportunity.