Mrs. Tabitha Karanja is a Kenyan Businesswoman, entrepreneur, Industrialist and CEO of Keroche Breweries, the first large brewery in Kenya owned by a non multinational company. Keroche accounts for about 20% of Kenya’s beer consumption.
Tabitha Mukami Muigai Karanja was born near Kijabe, Nakuru County. She went to Bahati Girls’ High school and proceeded to The University of Nairobi for her degree in Business Administration. She took up employment as an accounting clerk in the Ministry of Tourism were shemet and married Mr. Joseph Karanja with whom they have four children. Being a wife and a mother came first to Mrs. Karanja who strongly believed that family should always be top priority before business. She admits countless times that despite being the face of Keroche, her greatest source of support and encouragement has been her loving husband.
In 1997 Tabitha Karanja and her husband started making fortified wine to target the lower end of the Kenyan market. The Kenyan beer market had been dominated by products manufactured by multinational companies for over eighty years. Mrs. Karanja strongly believed that a local manufacturer stood an equal chance of competing by producing a beer that was of great taste, quality and affordable that could meet the kind available in the market.
Mrs. Karanja started by manufacturing a maximum of two hundred liters of fortified wines with five employees at their family farm in Naivasha. In November 2014, the company had grown to a capacity of a hundred million liters of different types of drinks with over three hundred employees. In 2015, KES. 5 billion (USD 55 million) investment saw Keroche increase its capacity tenfold to produce 600,000 bottles a day from the previous capacity of 60,000 bottles a day.
As any multi-million dollar investment, Mrs. Karanja faced a myriad of challenges. In 2003 the Kenya Bureau of Standards refused to grant Keroche a standardization mark for its products making it difficult for the company to sell its products. The company also faced long-standing challenges with the country’s tax manship, the latest resulting in its complete shutdown on 31st January 2022 following a 322 million tax arrears case.
Keroche Breweries was named Africa’s Best Growing Company at the 6th Annual Gathering of the African Leadership Network 2015 Summit held in Marrakesh. Mrs. Karanja, the company’s CEO has won numerous awards including Africa Businesswoman of the Year 2014-CNBC Africa, Africa Awards for Entrepreneurship (Transformational Business Award) 2015, Kenyan State honor from President Mwai Kibaki- Moran of the Order of the Burning Spear (M.B.S) and the Global Inspirational Women Leadership award 2016 and was inducted to the 100 Global Women Leaders Hall of Fame.
Behind every successful man is a woman, is a cliché phrase, but for Tabitha to shatter the glass ceiling, it took the support of her loving husband, Mr. Joseph Karanja. Having been at the helm of the company for about 25 years, Mrs. Karanja decided to offer her commendable leadership skills to the people of Nakuru County by vying for the 2022 Senatorial seat.
In an interview with one of the local television stations, she said that leaders in the corporate world should stop complaining about the public sector and instead act by providing transformative leadership. She intends to focus on agribusiness and promote value addition in industries to create employment and eradicate poverty in Nakuru County.
