“I lend money to petty traders without collaterals”
From Petrus Obi, Enugu
IN Enugu, Ksley Groups has become a household name; its popularity and fame have been attributed to the decision of the company to do business with the most ignored class of people in the society -the petty traders, the low income earners and such people that have no collaterals to obtain loans from commercial banks.With the Ksley Mega Vision, a business enterprise that gives loans to traders to improve their businesses, the company took Enugu by storm six years ago and today the story is different.As a crowd of customers struggled downstairs to get attention at its New Haven Head office, Enugu, the Chief Executive of the company, an enterprising young man, Chief Kingsley Amaechi Ubenyi took his time to explain the magic behind his success. For him, Ksley Mega Vision as a financial institution is working towards becoming the best in the management and distribution of funds in Nigeria. According to him, “This is like the local Isusu (thrift and savings) system. We are settled with the aim of becoming the number one financial company by helping our clients secure funds through our flexible savings and investment plan.” The company which started six years ago in Enugu has spread to over 10 states across the country including the states of the South-east, Lagos and Rivers State.
How did you start the journey of what is now known as the Ksley Groups?
I started in a one room apartment with an initial capital of ten thousand naira only I started very small; I had very little assistance. So, I had to go out there to the society even with my limitations. I had to talk to people who had the money; I gave them reasons why their money should be working for them. That if you have the money and you don’t know what to do with it, we have business men in the society we can push it out to and as well, we can still earn money from it. So I started with one or two persons who had money. I also looked at it from the point of view that there are petty traders who already have a business and needed more funds to push into their business but nobody out there is ready to give to them. So, what I had to do was come up with a contract; you are giving me your money because you have funds; I will give out to somebody who doesn’t have and sign another contract to make the money move in a circle. It comes from the investor, goes to the petty trader and returns to you. I stand as a middle man in all the process. From the little beginning, we learnt from a lot of mistakes; I had a lot of challenges and I had to learn from that until a point I built integrity. Once the business integrity is there, you have that honesty and sincerity in you; people will begin to repose their confidence and trust in you. So, the business is all about trust; I was able to build trust, that’s why I have been able to excel.
How many traders took the first loans?
I had just one customer then but with time, people started investing funds, and the loan customers began to rise.
The Ksley group, what is it all about?KSLEY Group of Companies is a business empire, one of the fastest growing businesses in sub Sahara Africa today. It is a mother institution housing a whole lot of subsidiaries; there are so many companies attached to the group. It was set up out of passion driven by the economic development of the society. Ksely Group gave birth to Ksely Mega Vision; a financial institution that deals with partnership and loan; it helps members of the society to partner with the company by bringing in their financial resources and in turn gives out these financial resources from the public to petty traders or to businessmen and women in the market. The traders in turn pay back to the company with little interest on a daily basis arrangement; the company also pays back to the investors with interest. Apart from investing and partnership, it has gone a long way to employ a lot of people; those that were downsized from commercial banks that still have the skills of marketing, we have been able to accommodate them because what we do has to do with marketing. You just have to do grassroots marketing; you have to do feasibility study on people who have excess funds, get the money from them, get into partnership with them and then throw the money to people who have fewer funds to do business but they have business ideas. So Ksley Mega Vision has to do with investment and partnership and like I said, it is a child under the Ksley groups.We need to see that you have a running business; this is because we prefer people who already have experience of buying and selling. When we give our money to people who have not gotten that experience, they tend not to have faith in their business. So when you call a market woman who is already in business, she has faith that the business will deliver. If she is coming for financial assistance, she knows within herself that she will be able to make use of that money judiciously.
Your company just opened a micro finance bank; what is the brain behind this?
Ksley Mega Micro Finance Bank is an institution that operates as a normal micro finance bank. We have the capacity to run trades; our doors are open to businessmen and women in the society; whatever services a bank can render, that is what Ksley Mega Micro Finance Bank can render. We had to come up with the bank to further strengthen the confidence of our customers because along the line, people started asking question on the security of the money they are giving to you. So, we are here to tell them that we are very sincere and that’s why we went with Central Bank laws and got the licence that permits us to operate as a micro finance bank.
Does that mean the company is planning to diversify?
Yes of course. We have other conglomerates like Ksley Mega Billionaires Ltd, which we use to put smiles on the faces of customers and the public. We actually want to create an environment where those who are not fit for business but who have little funds can invest small amount of money and in turn get very large returns or profit. It is in the form of lottery; it is a full stand alone lottery institution. What we do is that you buy the ticket for the lottery and you stand a chance to win; we have N500, 000 to be won by so many persons; we have N200, 000 to be won, we have N100, 000 to be won; we have bags of rice, bags of beans and cash prices as consolation for the public and our valued customers. This is done annually and it’s kicking off this July; it has already been launched and we are kicking off officially. My advice to the public is, whether you are a member of Ksley Mega family or not, you are free to purchase the tickets and you stand a chance to win a lot. Like I said, the Mega Billionaire was established because we want to put smiles on people’s faces; we are not saying that this is a business point for individuals out there but we are trying to make people feel happy at the end of the year; because you can imagine putting N500 and at the end of the day, you are getting N500, 000.We also have the FC Ubenyi which is on the pipeline; it is fast coming and we are seriously working on that. We are going to see our team grow up and begin to play in the Nigeria Premier League and other leagues in Africa and the World; we are seriously working on that. We also have the Ksley mega business school; now if you look at the society you find out that sometimes, money is not the problem but the knowledge. Some people want to make millions overnight without having background knowledge of what they can do that can give them that money.
So, what Ksely Mega Business School does is that it will give you an education on how to start up your business. It is a standalone financial school which will be affiliated to big schools in the financial educational sector to empower the youths because we are targeting the youths. We want to give them that skill; we want to give them that training before we can start talking about giving them money to finance their businesses.
We also have Ksley Mega oil and Gas Ltd, which means that we are also looking at the oil sector. Just like we have been saying, the problem of Nigeria is diversification; if the country can diversify and explore other business ventures it will be better off for it. That is why we at Ksley Group of Companies want to make sure that we spread our tentacles and that’s why we have Ksley Mega Oil and Gas. There is also the Ksley Mega Property Limited; we are going into real estate. We want to see how we can help the civil servants; we want to help the government to establish estates and ensure that we have enough housing units to go round. The Ksley Mega Foundation on its own is an institution that will help us give back to the society.
As a business enterprise, whatever profit we make for the year we should be able to impact on the lives of the masses. We want to see how we can make the widows smile in our society; we want to see a way of making motherless children and orphans to go back to school. So the foundation will go a long way to empower the society; from our returns, we are planning a kind of feedback mechanism, a way of putting smiles on the faces of the people especially the less privileged and those in need in the society.We also have Ksley Mega Farms Limited; with what is going on in the country, you see that the federal government is supporting the youth to go back to the farm; they want people to return to the farm, they want us to go into food production and with the scarcity of food items in the country, we are not left out of it. So Ksley Mega Group of Companies wants to play their own part in food security; and in line with training in Agricultural Science, I am a graduate of Agricultural Science so I want to make sure that I put into practice what I have learnt in school. We want to secure food for the nation. We also have other business subsidiaries like Ksley Mega Bureau de Change, Ksley Agro and by-Products, Ksley Mega Communications Limited which will see to empowering the communication sector in the country.
We want to go into media and publicity with a view to creating jobs for experts, our own citizens that are experts in the communications industry. We also have a Ksley Mega Construction Company Limited; we want to play our own role to see that we have good constructions in our states and the country. We want to see a situation whereby we Nigerians are the architects of our construction in the modern world; we want to play a part in that industry. We cannot fold our hands and watch the foreigners explore that venture while our people remain unemployed. We have capable hands in Nigeria who are architects; we have builders, we have a whole lot of engineers that can play in that sector. So we are coming into construction to ensure we are not left out in empowering our society. We also have the Kesley Mega Industries Limited to cover the manufacturing aspect of the industry. We are going to use that opportunity to create and to manufacture in partnership with big companies all over the world.
We want to see that Nigeria is able to drive technology. We want to start producing our own items; we want to start putting raw materials into finished goods in Nigeria and it’s going to create employment opportunity in our seemingly unemployment environment.
What is the group doing in the aspect of social responsibility?You can see to it that Kesley Group of Companies wants to touch lives in all aspects. If we are not touching from the financial end, we would want to touch you from the tourist end. If we are not reaching you from the educational end, we want to ensure that we are touching you from the communication end. We have in motion an all-round plan to ensure that we have employment opportunities; we create an enabling environment, a good and competitive environment for all to thrive. Ksley Mega is solely concerned with putting smiles on the faces of our customers. We also have Ksley Mega Travels and Tours because we believe that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. So we want to encourage tourism; Nigeria has tourist attraction; and not just Nigeria, we want to push tourism to other parts of Africa and the world. Tourism is a way of relaxation after some business activities and we intend to make people imbibe the habit of travelling which on its own part is education.