Entrepreneurship & Innovation
The dirty couches that started a cleaning business in Kampala
Lamula Benjamin Cole noticed the dirty couches of the customers he sold health products to, and built a cleaning business that now employs fellow youth.
The couches were dirty. So were the curtains and the carpets. Lamula Benjamin Cole was in those homes to distribute health products, work he landed after his high school studies, and noticing the state of the furniture, he says, spoke to his personality, "being able to notice even the smallest things."
He comes from a humble background, he says, and went into the workspace at a young age to support himself and contribute what he could at home. In the homes of the people who had bought his health products, he saw a second opportunity: cleaning services. "From this an idea came to my mind and upon making research about it I decided to go forward with it and ever since I haven’t looked back," he says.
“From that I have been able to employ fellow youth with whom we transform people’s spaces.”
Lamula Benjamin Cole
Why cleaning? People no longer had the time to do it themselves, he says, and staying tidy mattered so they would not contract diseases.
Today the business cleans newly constructed spaces, commercial buildings, pavers and concrete driveways, and couches, and it does property management. The model is cash intensive, he says, and that is the challenge. Away from the business, he is at Victoria University Kampala.
"We are dreamers and with focus we believe in ourselves," he says.