The Business That Almost Did Not Make It Past Year Two

Author: Abigael Wanjala
Date: August 20, 2026
Comments: No Comments

Grace started her catering business the way many small businesses in Kenya start.

With a skill, a phone, and a WhatsApp group.

She had been cooking for functions on weekends for three years. It was mostly word of mouth, cash in hand, no receipts, and no proper records. When the orders grew too large to manage alone, she brought in two friends. When the money started feeling significant, she opened a personal mobile money account to collect payments. She told herself she would figure out the business side later.

Later, as it often does, kept getting postponed.

“I’ll do it later” is the enemy of business.

By the time Grace’s catering business was two years old, she had a team of five. Her client list included corporate offices and weekend weddings.

But she also had a business cash flow problem that made little sense. She was busy. She was booked. People were paying her. And yet, every month by the 25th, her business account, which was still her personal mobile money account, was running thin. Suppliers needed deposits she could not always guarantee. Staff salaries were sometimes delayed. The van she needed to expand was always two months away from being affordable.

One evening, Grace sat down with her notebook and tried to trace where the money went. What she found was not fraud or mismanagement. It was simply chaos. Business money and personal money were living in the same place. There was no clear business savings strategy. There was no emergency buffer. And there were no proper financial records showing what had come in and what had gone out.

That made it difficult to plan. It also made it difficult to prove that her business was financially healthy when she needed funding.

She had a business.

She did not yet have a financial home for it. Biz bila structure haiwezi make.

Grace’s turning point came not from a bank but from a fellow business owner in her women’s network who had recently formalised her bizna through a Sacco for SMEs in Kenya.

The conversation was straightforward.

“You need somewhere that separates your business money from your personal money.”

“Somewhere that keeps records.”

“Somewhere that earns returns on what you save.”

“And somewhere that can eventually lend you money based on what you have built, not only on collateral you may not have.”

She was talking about the Mombo Sacco SME Biashara Account.

Grace had heard of a Sacco. She had always assumed they were for salaried employees, teachers, civil servants, and people with predictable payrolls. She had not imagined that a Sacco could serve a catering business run by five women out of a shared kitchen in Kahawa West. She was wrong.

And being wrong about it changed the trajectory of her business.

When Grace and her team opened their SME Biashara Account, a few things happened almost immediately that she had not anticipated.

The first was visibility. Every member of the team could see the account. Not just Grace, not just the treasurer, everyone. Transactions were visible in real time on the Mombo App. This single feature, which she had initially been nervous about, turned out to be the thing that transformed how the team related to money. When everyone can see, everyone is accountable. The invisible tensions that had been building around money, who was paid what, where that deposit went, why the balance was lower than expected, dissolved almost entirely because there was nothing left to wonder about.

The second was structure. A minimum monthly saving was now a commitment, not a wish. The discipline of putting money aside before it could be absorbed by the chaos of daily operations changed how Grace managed her cashflow. She began to plan around the saving rather than saving whatever was left, which, as she had already discovered, was usually nothing.

The third was legitimacy. The SME Biashara Account required registration documents, a business certificate, a KRA PIN, and a board resolution. Going through the process of gathering these was the first time Grace had ever formally treated her catering business as a legal entity. It felt, unexpectedly, like a rite of passage. Like the business had graduated into something more real.

Fourteen months after opening the SME Biashara Account, Grace’s business was approved for an Imarika Loan.

The loan is a long-term development loan available to eligible SME Biashara members who have been saving consistently for at least six months. The amount was significant. It was enough to purchase the van she had been looking at for two years. It was enough to upgrade the kitchen equipment. And it was enough to take on larger corporate clients she had previously turned down because she could not guarantee the required volume.

The loan was not simply about getting money. It was about small business financing in Kenya and having a financial structure that showed how the business was performing. Grace had built a consistent savings history and maintained a transaction record through her business account.

Her MScore, Mombo Sacco’s credit assessment system, reflected financial behaviour that a personal mobile money account could not easily demonstrate.

The van arrived on a Tuesday. Grace’s team of five stood in the parking lot of the shared kitchen and took a photograph. She still has it as her phone wallpaper.

Grace needed all of these things. The loan simply helped her move faster.

Grace’s story is not unusual. It is the story of many businesses that are real, viable, and growing but lack the financial infrastructure needed to grow further. These businesses have the skill. They have customers. They have hardworking teams. What they often lack is structure.

The SME Biashara Account was built for businesses like these. For Chamas that have been pooling money informally and are ready for something more structured. For small businesses whose owners are tired of mixing personal and business finances and everything that comes with that. For groups of friends or colleagues who have a shared financial goal and need a proper vehicle for pursuing it.

The account comes in five tiers: Stawi, Shaba, Fedha, Dhahabu, and Zumaridi.

Minimum monthly savings range from Ksh 10,000 to Ksh 300,000, with profit rates ranging from 4% to 9% per annum and loan access of up to Ksh 30,000,000 for qualifying members.

The SME Wallet offers multi level transaction approvals, meaning no single person can initiate and complete a transaction alone. This feature protects groups from the kind of quiet financial erosion that has ended many Chamas before it reached its potential.

For businesses with employees, the account also enables salary advance loans for staff, removing the pressure on employers to finance their team’s emergencies directly, which quietly drains business cashflow in ways that compound over time.

And Mombo Sacco assists groups that are not yet formally registered to formalise, because the team understands that most small businesses in Kenya do not start with paperwork. They start with a skill and a phone and a WhatsApp group. And they deserve support in growing from there into something that lasts.

If you are running a business, any business, any size, any stage, the question is not whether you need a financial structure. You do. The question is whether the structure you currently have is serving the business you are trying to build.

A personal mobile money account is not a business account. A tin under the bed is not a savings strategy. A mental note about what was paid and what is owed is not a record that will ever unlock credit, attract partners, or give you the kind of visibility that lets you make real decisions.

A business deserves its own financial home.

The SME Biashara Account is that home. Built for the businesses that make Kenya’s economy move, not the corporations, not the multinationals, but the catering businesses and the Chamas and the small enterprises run by people who got up early and stayed up late and built something real.

Grace’s van is three years old now. She is looking at a second one.

Opening an SME Biashara Account at Mombo Sacco requires a business certificate of registration or incorporation, a business KRA PIN, a board resolution, and officials’ IDs.

For groups that are not yet formalised, Mombo Sacco’s team can support you through the process.

Everything is managed through the Mombo App, available on Google Play and the Apple App Store.

Your business started with a skill, a phone, and a WhatsApp group.

Now it can have something more.

A proper financial home.

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