Kiboko Group of Companies: Pharmaceuticals and FMCG Distribution in Uganda and East Africa

Ramesh Babu, Managing Director at Kiboko Group of Companies, gives a brief history of the Group and talks about Kiboko’s main activities, mentioning key areas such as pharmaceutical distribution and FMCG distribution in Uganda and East Africa.

“My background qualification is as a cost and management accountant by profession. I worked in a government company in India called NTPC, or the National Thermal Power Corporation. When I left the company, I came to Kenya then to Uganda. We started as a small company. At that time, the Ugandan economy was dependent on imports. We had to import everything from Kenya, China, and India. Two of our partners are in Kenya. One of them has a manufacturing plant for roofing sheets. So, we started with that but roofing sheets does not take up volume so we would also bring in lightweight items like toilet paper, plastics, etc. We started very humbly. We had only two or three people working initially. Then, we went into pharmaceutical distribution in 1995. That is where the change in our setup occurred from Kiboko Enterprises to Kiboko Group. Kiboko Enterprises was doing the same trading activity. In 1995, everything was imported. We started importing pharmaceuticals from all parts of the world. Slowly, we spread into Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Kenya. Our presence now is in all of East Africa. Then, we went into FMCG distribution. After roofing sheets, we went into Philips lighting distribution. Philips has given us other divisions like electronics and appliances. In 2004, we got an opportunity to interact with Procter and Gamble and we started FMCG distribution with them. Today, we are the one of the biggest FMCG distribution companies in the country. We have many non-food items and consumer durables, like lighting and appliances, under our own brand. In 2009, we went into intravenous fluids manufacturing. That was the only unit in all of East Africa. There is a small unit in Kenya, but we have the biggest in terms of capacity and investment. From 2009 to five years later, we had utilized the full capacity and we went for expansion. We are going into expansion again now and IFC is supporting this expansion. Now, we have a private equity for our pharmaceutical business with the Carlyle Group, which is one of the biggest private equity firms with investments across the world. We are based in Uganda and we are employing more than 2000 people in Uganda, both in pharmaceutical and FMCG. I also have small businesses where we are distributors of lighting systems, inverters, batteries, generators. Now, we are setting up cable manufacturing. I have another factory called Kampala Siti Industries where we manufacture toilet paper, napkins, and thermal papers. I am also into agriculture. I have 1200 acres of land and we are now growing cashews, coffee, fruit trees, and cassava. I am now setting up the manufacturing unit in my agriculture farm called Pura Organic Agrotech. We want to manufacture starch from cassava soon”, says Ramesh Babu.

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