Tafadzwa Chikasha (35) cuts the figure of a flourishing entrepreneur as he speaks with the authority of charismatic preacher about his trade. His knowledge is almost encyclopedic.
He deals in everything from screws to microscopes and laboratory glassware. But his rise was not one in which he simply treaded the straight and narrow. He had tried his hand in different things before settling for the supply of laboratory equipment to schools and hospitals.
“I have come from far,” he remembers with nostalgia. “Many years back I experimented with formulae for simple things like cobra (floor polish), detergents, lotions and candles.”
This was the rather inauspicious beginnings, with the birth pangs painful. In the earlier high school years, Chikasha recalls how he had always had a passion for science. But it was only when he was studying at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) in 2002 that a new vision was birthed in his spirit.
“I had to work for my own pocket money so I decided to sell prepared slides (a type of mini-microscope) which make it easy for one to see the structure of the human skin or leaf,” he recollects. He sold the slides to schools in Harare and Chitungwiza.
While working at a local referral hospital as medical laboratory scientist, things started shaping up. He met the then headmaster at Seke 1 High, where he had gone to deliver the slides, and the man challenged him to spread his wings. He was so impressed by the young man’s burgeoning entrepreneurial flair that he counseled him to establish a company.
He took the advice and had never regretted. In 2006, he left formal employment to concentrate on his business, which was now on a sharp ascent as the orders he received, especially during public school examinations time, needed his full attention.
A leading market player at the time contracted him to provide them with different medical products following the registration of his company. He expanded his horizons and started importing his products from the UK, China, India and South Africa.
“In India you can get products in small quantities unlike in other countries like South Africa, so this gave me a competitive advantage in the industry because the majority of my competitors only relied on South Africa,” he says.
Chikasha’s major break, he remembers, came at the height of the foreign currency crisis as the economy went into comatose mode. Bigger companies were forced to wait for as long as six months before they could get orders, which were much bigger, and he capitalised on that gap.
“Bigger companies were afraid of buying foreign currency on the parallel market but because our clients needed small orders, we just bought the forex and brought in the goods,” he says. “So the relationships we established with our clients then have remained strong even up to this day.”
As a Christian, the father of two says his faith is symbiotically linked to his business in which he had seen openings were his competitors have only confronted closed doors.
“God has given me favour. I have been able to identify sources of cheaper products while others were getting them at much higher prices,” he says. “This business has closed networks, but I was able to break into those networks and establish strong business ties.”
There have been moments, he says, when he had placed orders that could only be described as suicidal before establishing the markets, but has been able to sell them all. He supplies equipment that includes microscopes, electronic balances, power supply units, lab chemicals and protective clothing.
His dream is to establish his own laboratory so he can live out his passion for production of scientific chemicals and equipment. Chikasha is naturally inventive. He has created his own scientific products that have been used in school and hospital laboratories. Though effective, these have however, not been officially registered because “the process is costly and cumbersome”, especially for small-time players.
The former Ngezi and Victoria High School student says many local scientists are gifted but have not been given an opportunity and resources to produce some chemicals that the nation is importing from foreign markets at a high cost. These include cotton and tobacco curing chemicals.
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