What better way to celebrate Women’s day than to have a strong woman as our Entrepreneur of the week! Carol Mugabi is an Alumnus of the Mara Foundation One on One mentorship program where she was mentored by Inachee’s Joseph Walusimbi in the second cycle.
Carol Mugabi and her mentor Joseph Walusimbi of Inachee
At the time, Carol was looking for ways to get her business, Café Au Lait, off the ground. Joseph helped her develop a streamlined business proposal to be presented to a selected list of potential investors. From these, she managed to get an investment of 4 million shillings. She re-invested this money into her already established business in order to get it to run profitably so that she could get enough money to eventually start Café Au Lait.
Her interactions with Joseph Walusimbi also helped get her introduced to Mr. Robert Nsibirwa of the Africa Coffee Academy. Mr. Nsibirwa was interested in opening L’Or Noir, a coffee shop. He offered Carol the opportunity to it set up. She was therefore in charge of everything to do with opening and running the café. “Having a mentor helped a lot by taking the business from paper (the proposals and cash flows) to reality” says Carol. On top of the Mara Foundation One on One mentorship, her experience at Good African Coffee helped her greatly to achieve this.
Carol prides herself with getting L’Or Noir to break even within its first three months!! In addition, her barista skills have been greatly improved. She was also making all the sandwiches, milkshakes, smoothies, juices and fast foods that are served at the café.
Her dream to open Café Au Lait still lives and is using this experience to learn as much as she can for the future. She continues to search for investors and with these achievements and experience, the future looks very promising for her!
Mara Foundation a non-profit social enterprise for emerging African entrepreneurs.
Mara Foundation 