Page 20 - BEA December 2019 - January 2020

Developer
“HUSTLE AND HEART” PAVES WAY FOR

REAL ESTATE ADVENTURE

20-hour days, a never-say-die mentality, and a tightly-knit focused group the foundation
stones for a bright future for KWEA
By Caroline Nyakundi

ending push to find your purpose,
your niche and what you can excel in,
to develop your identity, and change
the game through all these plus a
healthy dose of passion.
The urban dictionary defines
hustle as, “to have the courage,
confidence, self-belief, and self-
determination to go out there
and work it out until you find the
opportunities you want in life,”
or, ‘’working hard, usually towards
the common goal of creating an
income’’.
The co-founders of Kwea
understand this too well. My partner
Simon says, ‘’we always knew we
couldn’t qualify for any loans. That
left us without any other resources
other than us.” All we had was lots of
hustle and heart.
What we lacked in financial
capital we made up for with
determination and wits; intellectual
capital or sweat equity if you
may. We immersed ourselves into
Kwea right from inception of the
company, leveraging our experiences,
relationship-building skills and the
need to excel at all costs. Our shared
commitment to innovate formed
the framework for our business. We
sought to change the mindset of real
any people jump onto estate investing when we developed
the entreneurship our first project Kozi Suites in
Mbandwagon armed with Syokimau which is currently under
great ideas and a bucketful of cash construction.
believing they are ready to conquer a
The Kozi studio-lounge market that is probably flooded with With our backgrounds in the real
similar concepts clothed differently. estate segment that is crowded with a
It is so much more than that, as we lot of similar ideas and products, we
found out on our way to creating knew that we would have to crack our
Kwea, the vehicle in which we intend heads and stave off the conventional
to innovate and disrupt the market and innovate, in order to thrive.
with new real estate ideas.
We also realized that most
A lot of what entrepreneurship conventional real estate products
is all about is really the hustle that were expensive while offering
occurs behind the scenes; the never- unattractive returns on investment,

18 Building East Africa | December/ January 2020
18 Promoting sustainable development