Bidco Africa: Vimal Shah Discusses Joint Ventures, International Presence and Digitization

Dr Vimal Shah, Chairman of Bidco Africa, discusses recent joint ventures, such as the company’s expansion into the soft drinks and beverages space, as well as international presence; and talks about the huge benefits brought by digitization from a business standpoint.

“We have had some joint ventures and some expansions in the region. We have actually expanded our space in soft drinks and beverages. We joined with a Danish company and we expanded our plant last year. In the midst of COVID, we started exporting from Kenya to Denmark, Qatar, and many other countries. We repurposed ourselves completely and that was quite crucial for us. Now we are looking at supply chains and at local production in a bigger way. We are examining how we can take local fruits and process them into different products and send them to the world. Apart from that, of course, we as a group are looking at many other avenues now. Digitization was a big issue and with that digitization, we are now looking at fintech as well as many more areas because there is a lot more that we can do from Africa. This is where a lot more of repurposing, going to the consumer, B2B and B2C, both business to business and business to consumer, is going to become bigger. Logistics is a big issue. Our exports to the region expanded and that allowed us to look at a lot of the local supply chains, mainly Eastern Africa and up to DRC Congo, South Sudan, Ethiopia. Ethiopia does not have the foreign currency which is the biggest issue there. But the rest of the markets are able to work quite well. We continue up to Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique. We are looking at all those markets in a much bigger way. More local production in this region will become the main thing going forward”, says Vimal Shah.

“A lot of the processes that were manual before are now digitized. Work from home helped and contactless selling helped. People now do not want to go to a supermarket and they do not want to go to a retail store to shop. They want to buy from the convenience of their device and from a device, you just press a button, and you start buying. That convenience became a big thing and acceptance of that became a big thing. We have fast forwarded digitalization by five or six years. What was going to happen in a few years now has already happened because people are acquainted to buying online. Payments are all done online nowadays so there is very little cash moving across the board. It is all digitized. Information flow became a big thing. We put in SAP HANA. We also put in our new systems whereby we are now looking at sales automation, distributor management systems, and retail stores online. We have a lot of our customers coming online. Basically, the speed of everything goes up: it gets faster, it gets easier, and data travels so much more robustly and you can respond to it very quickly. If an order is placed in 10 minutes, you have the order, you are already sorting it out, you are sending it across, we have to organize the logistics, we have to organize the payments. That is a huge benefit here because in Africa, the adoption of digitalization was easy, was faster, was smoother, and we did not have a big hurdle to cross because bandwidth is available, mobile phones are available, digital is available, so the reach became easier”, he adds.

ABOUT BIDCO: Bidco Africa 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 beverages.

For more information, please visit: www.bidcoafrica.com.

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