Winning the long game

Sanchita Singh has taken the long road to Kenya in her role as Director of cooking oil, soap, detergent and food and drink manufacturer BIDCO Africa, both physically and professionally.

Her humble origins from a small town in northern India were a far cry from the wealth management career she began in Mumbai after moving to the city for university, but it was an environment in which she thrived.

“I come from a background in which I had absolutely no exposure to the corporate world. Coming from such a small town in the north and then suddenly going to Mumbai, which is such a buzzing city – a city that never sleeps – was a challenging journey as I was up against many peers who were from Mumbai itself,” she recalls.

“But very soon, I became a star performer of the region. Later on, I was actually headhunted by another bank. I was given their signature branch in Mumbai to run. Suddenly, I started getting calls from many colleagues saying, ‘How did you land that job?’ I found out through HR that I was the youngest branch manager pan-India. So that’s when you feel that, OK, there is definitely something good that has happened here.”

In that role, Singh’s entrepreneurial spirit and business savviness grew. Through her growing network, she got wind of an opportunity in Dubai to turn around an underperforming food company, whose owners were considering closing. She couldn’t resist the challenge and was imminently Dubai bound.

Singh immediately spotted an opportunity for the company, which was importing specialty foods from Thailand into Dubai’s five-star hotels, to expand across the Middle East, into Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman. Her goal was to optimize productivity and add new product lines without much of an increase in labor and warehouse resources. Within eight months of Singh’s leadership, the company was making a profit.

Singh’s work earned her a global reputation as someone who could both methodically and innovatively generate success from failure. She met BIDCO Africa’s Chair in 2019 and has been based in Thika, an industrial hub about 42 kilometers north of Nairobi, ever since, starting with the company as a business development strategist.

Magical milestones

At BIDCO Africa, Singh has worked her magic yet again. In 2023 she became the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company’s first female Director in its 38-year history – an achievement that is even more unique when you consider that many East African businesses tend to be run by family members, she explains.

“I only realized that after I got this position and people started approaching me saying, ‘Do you know this is something incredible?’ That was a proud moment,” she says.

“But I take it as more responsibility – the increased level of authority comes with a lot more assurance toward the shareholders who have trusted me with such a big responsibility that, yes, now I can take over the reins of the company and run it.”

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BIDCO Africa’s goal is now to secure and sustain the number one market share in Africa by 2030. Singh’s strategy is one she has a proven track record in – category and product expansion, thanks to partners like Kerry Ingredients.

“In Africa itself there is so much opportunity to attain more market share,” she points out. “In fact, we’ve recently launched a new category, a baby care range, which was not there before. We’ve also recently acquired a company that makes breakfast cereals and snacks. So these are the two lines that we have just added in the past year.

“We’ve also done a lot of expansion into the home-care product range. And our goal remains to grab 70 percent of the consumer household basket.”

That, she acknowledges, is becoming more challenging to do, as increased taxes have put an extra burden on consumers’ pockets, leading shoppers to downsize the volumes they’re purchasing and shifting to equivalent products at lower price points.

Turning a crisis around

But where there are problems, Singh sees opportunities. She observes that Kenya is ideally located between Europe, Asia and the Middle East, with an abundance of agricultural produce grown locally. Creating an ecosystem where those goods are converted all the way into finished manufactured items and exported is where Singh sees growth for the company, since currently, much of Kenya’s agricultural produce is directly exported.

“The idea is that if we start manufacturing all of it here, then we can do that value-add end-to-end from raw material all the way to the finished goods. And if we export, then of course, there is a better impact on the economy of the country,” she explains.

“That’s why I personally feel that Kenya can actually become a hub for business in the FMCG industry. But of course, for that, we need to have the public and private sectors putting in a bit more effort than what they’re doing today.”

BIDCO Africa also has the local upper hand against multinationals that enter Africa, then swiftly exit as they find it unsustainable to do business there.

“All these companies come with their multinational know-how and working. But what I have learned over here is that as a company, you need to have that localization, and the local know-how is very, very important,” Singh insists.

“Global best practices are really good to learn from, but if we don’t adapt to the requirements of the law of the land, then it becomes a bit challenging over time. And that’s why I feel that localization is important for sustainable and continuous growth.”