Karibu Homes: Providing Affordable Quality Homes to the Kenyan Population

Ravi Kohli, Founder and Managing Director of Karibu Homes, explains what are the company’s main competitive advantages.

“Karibu Homes is a company that was formed specifically to provide a housing solution to people that are as low down on the income ladder as is commercially viable. Our most expensive home, which is approximately 6 million Shillings, is the cheapest that you would find otherwise on the market. There are very few developers, maybe only two or three, that are providing a housing solution for approximately 2 million Shillings to about 7 million Shillings. Another advantage is that we are extremely driven by our market. We did not just come along and say we were going to build houses for the middle-income Kenyans who are lacking in supply. We actually spent more than two years speaking to the market. We really know our customer. We did focus groups and we interviewed hundreds of people to understand what a Kenyan family wants from a community. From that, we learned that Kenyan families definitely wanted an open, communal space so their children could run around. The primary thing on every Kenyan’s mind, no matter your income level, is security. Our communities provide very good security in the form of gated communities. We offer electric fences, guarded gates, etc. Kenyans also experience extreme fluctuations in services such as electricity and water. So, we provide extremely robust water storage and on the power side it is all internally done with our own transformers. Another huge competitive edge we have is that we engage with a company called Arup International, which is one of the world’s largest infrastructure firms. Their foundation did a full schematic of our master plan. They have experience in delivering affordable housing in hundreds of countries. They value engineered our entire schematic and they came up with interesting solutions such as needing to have wider storm water drainage because there will be 5,000 people walking here. Ten years from now, you want to make sure that the external infrastructure is very robust. So, they made us tweak all that infrastructure to make it more higher end. They also insisted that we have a look at the design of the actual structure. So, we use a load bearing wall technology. The impact of this is reducing the cost to us which we then use that money to improve other infrastructure, but it does not hamper the quality of the product. We have gone through a very deep, detailed value engineering exercise”, says Ravi Kohli.

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