Yuvinalis Japhet is in his Dubai office, phone in hand, confirming a desert safari booking for the next morning. On the wall behind him hangs framed photos of his fleet: A Toyota Land Cruiser Prado, a Land Cruiser LC300, a Hyundai Tucson, and a 37-seater bus he bought last year.
“This is my whole fleet right now,” says the 34-year-old.
It is a long way from where he started.
Japhet landed in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the winter of 2016, one face in a busload of Kenyans, Ugandans and Tanzanians driven straight from the airport to a labour camp in Sonapur (‘City of Gold’), a district nearly 15 kilometres east of Dubai.
“I think there were 32 of us, all hired by Transguard, a company that supplied workers to hotels and food companies,” he says.
Four men shared a room, sleeping on bunk beds like boarding school students in a dormitory far from home. He started as a kitchen steward, then spent six months as an outdoor waiter at the five-star Atlantis Hotel.
“My pay was around Sh28,000 a month,” he says. The job came with free transport, accommodation and meals, so he saved much of the pay.
In November 2017, he enrolled for driving lessons and got his licence the following May. By 2019 he was driving taxis for a local company, hoping for better terms. Instead, he found work with no basic salary, built entirely on commission. “If you don’t work, you don’t get paid,” he says.
Fines cut deep into his earnings. Some were as high as Sh15,000 for something as small as forgetting to buckle up. In his best month, he took home close to Sh28,000. But the job taught him the country inside out.
“I was so familiar with the country that even if I was to start something, I already knew what I should do and where I should start,” he says.
An idea and an expensive lesson
The idea for his company began forming while he ferried fellow Kenyans across the seven emirates. He started a WhatsApp group for monthly road trips, a way to fight loneliness, that slowly turned commercial. Before it could grow, trouble found him. Frequent fines got his licence suspended for six months.
He leaned on savings and sold Kenyan hoodies, bracelets and foodstuffs like unga and omena to homesick countrymen. During that stretch, he bought his first car, a used Mitsubishi Lancer, for about Sh250,000, and used it for side hustles and airport pickups.
When he eventually went to sort his paperwork, he discovered his old taxi company had marked him as absconded, a serious immigration offence. A local Emirati contact helped settle the matter, but it cost him nearly Sh1 million to clear the fines and lift the flag from his file.
“It was one of the most expensive lessons,” he says.
With his name cleared, Japhet registered Al Badoor Project Management Services, sponsoring freelance visas for people wanting to live or work in the UAE.
“Clients paid for their visa, I covered the government fees, and the difference became my income,” he says.
In May 2022, he registered it as a tourism company, Yuvinalis Tourism LLC, and turned his road trips into a proper business. “The tourism licence alone cost about Sh800,000, and it has to be renewed every 12 months,” he says.
His office contract cost about Sh1.1 million a year, paid partly through post-dated cheques. Insurance added roughly Sh80,000, and furnishing the office another Sh600,000. “In total, I spent more than Sh2.2 million just to get the company started,” he says, all from saved commissions, without a single bank loan.
His fleet grew one vehicle at a time, bought whenever the business earned enough.
Today, Yuvinalis Travel and Tours runs desert safaris, city tours, Burj Khalifa visits and dhow cruises.
Packages start from about Sh190,000 for four nights of accommodation and select activities. Seventy percent of his clients are Kenyan, he says, loyalty built on word of mouth rather than advertising.
Running his own company has tested his patience in ways employment never did.
“Sometimes I feel like giving up, because it can be overwhelming,” he admits, before adding that the reward outweighs the frustration once things are managed properly.
His advice for aspiring entrepreneurs is simple. ‘Know your market before making anything official, keep enough cash saved to survive the slow months, and treat every early mistake, even the expensive ones, as a lesson rather than a failure.’
Seven years into the tourism business, Japhet is now eyeing a Mombasa branch and an expansion into Qatar.
Hobby that became good business
Across the same city, Juma Abubakar Osore built his business out of a hobby. At 57, he runs a free zone company, handling import and export, training, and travel consultancy, all from one desk.
His path there was never planned. Juma spent 16 years at Emirates airline before the Covid pandemic cost him his job.
“When I was off duty, I could buy things, take them to the Somalis, they’d ship them, and I’d learn how the business works,” he says.
It started with suits for lawyers and politicians back home. “I started posting suits on my social media status, and before I knew it, two or three people would want to buy a suit from me,” he says.
That small demand pulled him toward cars and machinery, work he found more interesting than clothes.
When Emirates let him go, Juma made a decision to pursue his hobby full time. “I would rather do my own thing that I’m proud of, something I can use to help myself, and maybe the generations to come.”
He registered the company in 2020, a year after leaving Emirates. The startup capital was modest.
“I started with about Sh493,000 for the licence and one visa,” he says. Adding five work visas pushed the total closer to Sh880,000. Each new employee adds another Sh70,000 to Sh88,000, depending on the quarter.
His business now runs on three pillars. The first is e-commerce, mostly spare parts moving between Kenya and the UAE. The second is training, arranged in house or outsourced. The third is travel consultancy, helping Kenyans plan trips with hotel bookings and itineraries across Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah.
Juma sources containers imported in bulk from Japan, sold through auctions once they land.
“If I get an enquiry for, say, a Toyota part, and I know of a container coming in with that part, I’ll go source it, or find people who’ve been in the auction and buy from them,” he says.
Volumes shift constantly, sometimes a tonne or two, sometimes far less, and he often consolidates shipments with other buyers to fill a container.
Delivery delays are his most common complaint, though he now offers faster couriers like Aramex or DHL for urgent, smaller items.
Competition comes from rivals sourcing directly from Japan and undercutting his prices, but Juma insists his edge is quality. “We test the engines and get the best quality from Japan, as opposed to those who buy in bulk without testing,” he says.
Moving large sums of money creates its own headaches, since banking limits force him to split big payments into several transactions.
His secret for success is quite open.
“You need to be truthful, and commit to what you say. Trust, once broken, is hard to rebuild in a market built almost entirely on referrals.’
Looking ahead, he wants to set up a storage yard in Kenya so clients no longer wait for items sourced one by one from Dubai, a plan he expects to pursue once the next election cycle back home settles.
From DJ to concert promoter
George Otieno, known to friends as Geo Ogango, built his venture the loud way, one stage light and one packed dance floor at a time.
Geo was a young man in Nairobi when he first felt the pull of music and crowds, spinning vinyl in small clubs in the 90s. He remembers a 1990 dance competition at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre where the prize was a Fiat Uno.
He didn’t win it, but the memory stuck. “I think that was the background of my entertainment journey,” he says.
Weekends pulled him to Kisumu, where he fell for Ohangla music, dancing to Tony Nyadundo at the Sunset Hotel, who later became his friend. That friendship turned into a business idea when Geo convinced Tony to perform in Nairobi. He opened a small shop and began promoting shows, funding them from his day job. “I was just spending, and in the process, I saw this was a good business,” he says.
Geo arrived in the UAE in 2012, planning to stay a year. “Once you’re out here, you start getting busy, you have to keep the pace by trying to grow more,” he says, explaining how one year became 15.
His first Dubai job was in close protection, giving him structure while he studied the entertainment scene. He noticed Indian, Pakistani and Filipino communities flying in their own artistes, but nobody doing the same for East Africans.
“I said, okay, I’ll do Luo music, because I have a good network of Luo musicians,” he says.
His first event, on May 1, 2014, featured musician Johnny Junior and cost him more than Sh704,000. “The response was very good,” he says.
Registering a full company was expensive, so he worked under hotel and club licences instead, a common arrangement among promoters. Even that required a residence visa costing Sh528,000, with medical tests and financial checks that took three months to clear.
Once settled, his business expanded across East Africa and eventually to Jamaica, bringing in acts like Turbulence, Fantan Mojah and Etana, alongside Kenyan stars such as Prince Indah, Guardian Angel and Nadia Mukami.
His most expensive show, featuring Prince Indah, cost around Sh1.5 million.
Every performer on stage, even an emcee, needs a licence costing nearly Sh28,000, meaning a seven person band alone costs about Sh197,000 in licensing, plus a Sh52,000 application fee.
Still, the returns come fast. “If you put in like Sh352,000, you get your Sh702,000, or maybe extra, in return,” he says.
The road hasn’t always been smooth. Covid pandemic forced him to cancel shows already booked, including Jamaican acts under contract, and visa delays sometimes took over two months to clear. Eventually the Jamaican leg became unsustainable, and Geo shifted his focus back to Kenyan and East African talent.
Beyond concerts, he built a second income organising corporate events that link Gulf investors with Kenyan businesses, and more recently sourcing Kenyan meat and vegetables for UAE buyers. That diversification carried him through his longest gap yet, an entire year without a live show in 2025, after buying property and shifting toward trading.
His office now sits in the Dubai Airport Free Zone, run by a lean team of three.
“The law is straight,” he says, comparing Dubai’s business environment to Kenya’s. “You only earn what you deserve to earn.”
His plans now stretch into Qatar and Saudi Arabia, with an eventual return to Kenya. “I don’t need to go to their countries,” he says. “It’s their turn now to come to our country.”
Asked what success means after everything he has built, Geo doesn’t point to numbers.
“Success is when you’re actually proud of what you’ve done, which, of course, I’m very proud of what I’ve done so far,” he says.