Bidco Africa: Competitive Advantages of East Africa’s Leading FMCG Manufacturer by Vimal Shah

Dr Vimal Shah, Chairman of Bidco Africa, explains what are the company’s competitive advantages compared to the other players in the sector, not only in Kenya but in the East African region as well. Bidco is East Africa’s leading manufacturer of Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG). Started in 1985 as a soap manufacturing plant in Nairobi (Kenya), Bidco has continuously grown over the years to be the home of some of East Africa’s most loved brands across the edible oils and fats, hygiene and personal care, and most recently food and beverage brands.

“Firstly, we at Bidco operate like we are a startup at every stage. It has been 34 years now. Secondly, we employ world-class practices, from ISO 14000, 9000, 18000, 22000, working with the UN Global Compact, eLean, Kaizen. We adopt all the best practices that you would use in an international setting. What a multinational has we also have here and we employ it on the ground. We are able to do faster decision making because we realize the ball is on the ground and we can change track as soon as we need to. Responsiveness is quite fast for us. We also understand the consumer in Eastern Africa and Africa better. We still do not know West Africa or Southern Africa well and we will keep on looking at what to do there. The way the markets are served is different. We have local people who know what is happening, we know where the resources are, we know what the competitive advantages of doing things are. Ultimately, we have local ground knowledge of the pulse. That is quite important for us because even here, the consumer is changing and they will continue changing. The way Africa is growing and the way we are growing here is going to be leapfrogging. We will not go through the same old slow-paced improvement incremental growth, but we will grow exponentially. That is where we have to be prepared. At Bidco, we can change management quickly and rapidly implement ideas. Apart from that, we are now expanding into many more adjacent sectors in the consumer goods area. We are looking at many more hygiene and personal care products, food products, animal feeds, agriprocessing. We work on a system where there is zero waste. We have a full value chain but we have reduced our waste and making our business sustainable is very important for us. It is not just about profits or people or planning; it is all of it together. We put in the systems, the processes, the people, and we have continuous learning. Our people are continuously trained through our training centers in the factories where they learn by doing. We have to change ourselves faster than the pace of change, otherwise we will not be relevant anymore”, says Vimal Shah.

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