Ken Karangi was a website designer. But his passion lied in a different kind of design. He had always been an art lover, and he was just waiting for the day he could merge his computer skills with his passion.
That day came in 2011, when he received an email from a friend who wanted to show him some artworks he was interested in. They were great, but expensive.
The thought was planted: couldn’t art be made available to people who didn’t have a lot of money, too?
The idea took a while to develop, but in 2013 it was fully matured: Karangi quit his job and teamed up with six local artists from Nairobi. Capitalizing from the growing number of Internet users in Kenya, he started selling their works through a Facebook page.
Since then, business has been steadily on the rise and in his second year Karangi almost doubled his revenue to $20,000, a threshold he has already surpassed in 2015.
“We create custom-made items,” he told CNN. “Items that you don’t pick from the shelf, but you create them to suit your needs.”
Read more at CNN African Start-Ups
