A Female Kenyan Wine Producer

Mrs. Karanja is the founder of the only large-scale brewery（酿酒厂）in Kenya actually owned by a Kenyan. She was born in a middle-class family. She was lucky enough to have graduated from one of the best schools in Kenya. After marriage, she and her husband ran a hardware store（五金台）for seven years, but then she wanted to do something more interesting.

Despite having no experience of the drinks industry, Mrs. Karanja recognized a gap in the market. Low-income Kenyans struggled to afford to buy the alcoholic products of the global firms. And many Kenyans were being injured or even killed by erous home-made wines.

To solve this problem, Mrs. Karanja came up with the idea of a fortified wine（加度葡萄酒）. Despite being low-priced, the wine would be made to high standards. So using their savings, Mrs. Karanja and her husband set up their own brewery, Keroche.

The beginning days were the toughest, because getting people to trust their products was not easy. Keroche also faced a problem in getting its products distributed, as most distributors wished to continue working only for famous global firms.

Over the next five years, however, sales slowly built up. Later, the company stopped producing fortified wine and moved into beer and other drinks. Today, the business has a 20% share of the overall drinks market in Kenya. Mrs. Karanja is now considering expansion into other countries.

Her hardware store was very successful.