Ugandan teenager began with $14 and created his empire of paperbags

#AndrewMupuya #YELI #Uganda #paperbags This is the fascinating story of Andrew Mupuya and proves that perseverance pays in the long run – today he is an award-winning entrepreneur but he was just a 16-year-old teenager who decided to take on the world. He was in need of money and, luckily for him, at the time, officials in the country had announced that they were considering a ban on plastic bags to curb environmental damage.
In 2008, Andrew Mupuya was still in secondary school and, with both his parents unemployed, he seized the opportunity to start a paper bag production company. He carried out a feasibility study, market research around retail shops, kiosks, supermarkets around Kampala and discovered there is need and potential market for paper bags.
Once he took off, there was no looking back. His business has grown extensively and today, at the age of 21, he is the owner of Youth Entrepreneurial Link Investments (YELI), the first registered Ugandan company to make paper bags.
He employs 16 people who produce up to 20,000 paper bags each week and his long list of clients includes restaurants, retail stores, supermarkets, medical centers, as well as multinational companies like Samsung -- YELI has made about 1,000 niche bags for the local stores of the electronics company.‎
He proudly says that right now he has 72 clients and most of them always come back.