Jigna Patel Presents Ozone Beverages: A Water Purification and Packaging Company Based in Kenya

Interview with Jigna Patel, Director of Ozone Beverages

What have you achieved since we last spoke with you in 2019?

My focus was very clear about what I wanted in 2019, in 2020, 2021, 2022 and up to 2030. We started as one unit in Nairobi, and our plan was to go global and to have more branches of Ozone Beverages. We are a water purification company, and we package drinking water. Even though we have had challenges with COVID-19, we opened another unit for Ozone Beverages in Mombasa in 2021. It is a bigger unit. It is a more professional processing plant with better technology, more people and more products. At the same time, I wanted to go global with machinery to convert sea water to drinking water. We have sold to two companies in Tanzania and Lagos, and we are dealing with investors in Ethiopia for a third.

What are your competitive advantages?

Competition is very healthy. It helps people. Today there are maybe 600 companies in Kenya that are producing packaged water, but it is still not enough for all of Kenya.

We have two major companies, Ozone Beverages and Ozone Overseas. Ozone Beverages is into the purification of water. We package water and supply it to industries. We sell 20-liter refills and we have branded water bottles. They are glass bottles because Kenya has a kind of plastic-free environment. We supply hotels, restaurants and airlines. Our other company, Ozone Overseas Ltd, has machinery related to reverse osmosis, which is water purification. We also have bottling machines. We work with turnkey projects when companies come to us wanting packaged drinking water with their name and label on it. That is one thing we do.

Number two is planting machinery. There are many companies that need reverse osmosis machines. Maybe it is a medical company that wants water for use in producing medicine. They have certain parameters for that water, so we set up machines to meet their production requirements. The biggest challenge in Kenya right now is in places like Mombasa, which is on the coast, where the water is so salty it cannot be used in households. The water needs to be processed to reduce the TDS, Total Dissolved Solids, basically salt. We process it in such a way that it can be used for general purposes. It is mainly a challenge for hotels because they are close to the sea. We provide solutions for water quality issues.

We give turnkey projects three options. If they have limited investment and want to start with a small-scale project, we give them the option of manual packaging or a semi-automatic packaging machine and the speed is good. If they have a manual packaging setup there are two challenges. One is hygiene and number two is speed. We also have the fully automatic packaging line option, depending on the investment capacity. There was a widow who was struggling to survive, and she asked us if we could help her with a business to support her family. She said she only had a million (Kenya Shillings). We opened a small refill station where people come with their own bottles and refill them for the price of 20-liters. That small-scale business has led to her having a packaging machine. She is now packaging water in her name. That is what we do, we help people grow in water packaging.

Are you creating your own competition by setting up other companies that package water?

Competition is very healthy. It helps people. Today there are maybe 600 companies in Kenya that are producing packaged water, but it is still not enough for all of Kenya. There are some people who do not have drinking water and who at times consume mud in their ground water. There are places that have not been reached, water needs to be available to people, so competition is very good.

There are outreaches where we are not able to supply water. We do not send our trucks to Lamu because it is not secure. In Somalia, there is a place called Kismayo that we are supplying water to from Nairobi. We have a guy there who I have told should open his own company. It is risky for him to come to Kenya and go back there with water containers and he is not making much. We can supply the machinery to produce water to be sold locally. It is so painful to see places where there is no water.

Do you want to push Ozone Beverages more, or do you want to grow Ozone Overseas? What is your strategy?

I will be concentrating more on Ozone Overseas Ltd, which promotes turnkey projects for water companies and plants and machinery. The reason being is we will be reaching more counties for affordable water.

What do you see as your main success story?

In this COVID, when people are hesitating seeing each other and supplying goods, I have had clients saying they wanted us to supply water to them. There were lockdown issues so early on we reached the prisons to supply water. We have worked hand in hand with an agency working with prisons. They help prisoners readjust back into the world. We had an opportunity to go into the biggest community jail in Kenya. We saw the need for supplying water as others were rejecting deliveries. That was a good thing that made me happy knowing I did something for the community, for society.

I had a very bad experience in on my holidays. I hit speed bumps that slowed my car, and I was carjacked by ten kids, aged about 13 to 17 years old. They started banging on my car and I thought they were thieves who wanted money, so I threw 5,000 shillings out of my window. They said no money, they needed water. That brought me to a place where I have to supply water to those areas. In my culture in India, we have a saying that when you do a good job with your right hand, your left hand should not work. There is no need to be loud about what you did for society, you do not need to shout about your achievements for society. We keep it to ourselves, but what I know is what I have done for society. We have done quite good in supplying water to areas where the challenges are very unique.

To develop your company, are you looking to partner with other companies, or get investors?

We have technology. We have good experience with water purification. We have knowledge about how it works. With these three things, I would like to get investors. For Ozone to create more branches, it may take another 10 years, but if I have ten people working together from each country and each one saying let’s develop here let’s develop there, I am very open for those investments to come in. We will multiply our growth, so we are definitely open for investors who are interested in making a bottling company, or a project for water bottling. And the good thing is we are so affordable for any company to grow. It is not that you need to have billions or millions in your account to have a water company. We have a solution for every pocket. So, we are looking for partners and investors from other countries in Africa.

What do you offer that is different from other water companies?

When we opened our company in Kenya in 2016, there were challenges. The main one was that supply was not consistent. Traffic in Nairobi is a real struggle. To go 15 kilometers, you have to assume 2 hours and it should not be more than half an hour. We saw that was the biggest challenge for all suppliers. They were not reaching clients on time. With my Master of Business Administration qualification, I worked with the logistics and made that change, and all my clients are amazingly satisfied with my supply. We supply on time which makes a big difference to customers. At times you may have cheaper water, you may have better packaging, you may have better credit with other suppliers, but if it is not on your table and you cannot have it, it is not useful. That is where I make the difference.

In Kenya, there are three big companies supplying water. There are basically two groups – 1) very good companies but very expensive, and 2) small-scale companies which do not work very professionally. Their quality may fluctuate at times, supplies may fluctuate at times. There was a very big space in the middle where your quality and your services are good and at the same time you are very affordable. That is one thing that we did in the last few years so now good quality water is available at an affordable price.

What do you want to achieve in the short to medium term, in say 2 or 3 years from now?

Everything comes as an opportunity but at the same time a challenge. COVID came with both. It came with a big opportunity for the health and hygiene sector, and it came up with a very big challenge on the hotel and tourism industry. We learned that we should not only work for Ozone Beverages and Ozone Overseas because if the bottling industry closes or is suffering, it is on the low side right now, packaged drinking water supplies will be reduced. I have to diversify and that is what I am working on. In another 2 years I have a plan of diversification into solar opportunities because I am seeing a lot of need for solar in Kenya. The second line I will be pushing is my auto machines because drinking water needs are increasing, and I would love to work with countries in their national parks and low scale areas where there is no water to drink. I am focusing on those projects with the UN and African Union.

What inspires you to do what you do?

Water is a basic need. Everybody knows if there is no water there is no life. Somebody can survive without food for 14 or 15 days, but without water, it is 3 or 4 days. What I am dealing with is a very important thing which God has given us. The good thing is the availability is there, but management of the water is not there. It really gives me a big encouragement that something which God has provided us, if we do not take care of it, if we do not utilize it rightly, we can have a lot of charities. I have seen myself there are so many dry places where one cup of water is everything for them. That need of water, the need of good drinking water drives me a lot. I like my business because I am into the major need of a human.

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