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I used to think I needed a big idea or investor. How i started my onions business

· noise   r/entrepreneur  ·  ↑ 513  ·  💬 105  ·  2025-05-27  ·  kw: buy box price  ·  open on reddit ↗
your rating:
Tool
none
Issue
Small-scale agricultural traders lack efficient supply chain logistics; manual transport via passenger buses (70kg onions) and lack of formalized shipping infrastructure forces reliance on informal methods, limiting scale to sub-1-tonne shipments to avoid tariffs.
Cost
€0.20/kg profit margin; unstated total revenue but implies 100s of kilos/week
Recommendation
none
extracted with
anthropic/claude-haiku-4.5 · 2026-05-08

Body

I’m 26, living in Nairobi, and for a long time I was jus stuck. I have a degree, sent out job applications for months and still no breakthrough. One day while visiting a friend in Arusha, I noticed something,onions were way cheaper there than in Nairobi. significantly cheaper. I didn’t think much of it at first. But when I came back home and mentioned it to a street grocery vendor near my place her reaction made me just do it she said “If you can get me onions at a lower price i will buy” Few weeks Iater i went to a Border city btn Tanzania and Kenya called Namanga with some saved cash and bought about 70kg of onions. No shipping,no drama. I tossed my sacks into the back of a passenger bus. My onions stayed under 1 tonne, so I didn’t need to deal with tariffs or too much agricultural import laws. I repacked them into 1kg bags and started supplying small food vendors and small grocery store owners . They loved it. I was saving them money, and I was making a small but steady profit about €0.20 per kilo profit. Doesn’t sound like much but it adds up fast when you move a few hundred kilos every week. All this came from something so simple. A basic product. A gap in the system. And just being willing to move. Now I’m thinking bigger. Maybe I’ll rent a car and start shipping close to 1 tonne. I’ve got regular clients now, and I know there’s more demand out there. I welcome any questions and opinions. Thanks

Top comments (7)

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[score=177] loud-spider
Classic arbitrage play. Nicely done. Hope you go from success to success.
[score=59] CronosKapital
I feel stuck and hope to find a business like you
[score=22] Mesmoiron
Great idea. You did well.
[score=18] Bunnylove3047
I love it! I have been friends with some Kenyans here in the US for the past 20 years. So much about the culture is beautiful, so is the food, which often includes onions. Hahaa I wish you much success. Have you found anything else that is much cheaper from the other location and used in large quantities?
[score=15] Aequitas61
This is such a smart, scrappy hustle love how you spotted a gap and just went for it. That’s real entrepreneurship right there.
[score=25] Nearby-Ad8822
Kijana, good job. Read a book called, 'The Sweaty Startup: How to Get Rich Doing Boring Things' Started it yesterday but I knew the author's philosophy of doing boring businesses since I started hearing his podcast last year. He basically deconstructs the idea of having a big idea and says that the rich people he knows are doing boring businesses that have existed before. They didn't invent the wheel. They are just doing common things exceptionally well. In the book he talks about how to manage a boring businesses to be rich. Good luck reading. Hope you don't tear up from the onions. For now, Ruto Must Go!