RYAN CHIGOCHE
Mudiwa Skincare co-founder, Hellen Chipidza, has bemoaned the rigorous registration process for start-up businesses, saying the difficulties associated with the procedure are adversely impacting on the growth of the business.
Chipidza, who co-founded the lotion business with her friend, Rutendo Barara, soon after the two graduated from Bindura University of Science and Technology last year, also said the problem was making it difficult for their products to be accepted by bigger retail shops. She has, therefore, appealed to the authorities to help the start-up in the process.
Chipidza also said funding should be available to small businesses to help them grow and become established businesses.
“Policy makers must ease regulations to do with company registrations as the process at the moment is cumbersome. It’s a huge task. It takes about two months to get a company registered, especially with the presence of these companies nowadays who claim that they do company registration,” Chipidza told Business Times this week.
She added: “Funding must also be availed to help the youth in their start-ups. If funding is available, we will be able to buy raw materials in bulk and produce in bulk or have the product manufactured with our formulation somewhere else and then have a ready-made product coming to Zimbabwe. Right now, we are a home-based industry. There is a ceiling in terms of production when you are working from home. If maybe, we were able to get a factory we could produce much larger volumes.”
Due to their strong chemistry background, Chipidza and Barara, who hold a Bachelor of Science Honours Degree in Chemical Technology, were able to come up with formulations for lotions. That’s how Mudiwa Skincare was born with the aim to provide a competing quality skincare brand.
“We launched this business on September 1, 2020 with the aim to provide quality and affordable skincare products for all skin types.
“Mudiwa is a Shona word that means My Love. Therefore, your skin is your love and because love is unconditional one needs to take greater care of their skin. With the formulations, we used to make Mudiwa Skincare one can take care of their skin and nourish it and glow,” Chipidza told Business Times.
Mudiwa Skincare to date has got two product creams namely Shea butter body cream for dry skin and the Aloe Vera body cream for oily skin.
The two also repackage natural raw products like raw shea butter, coconut oil, and castor oil.
Although the business is home-based, they plan to expand in the near future and get Mudiwa Skincare in those big retail supermarkets and penetrate the market as they are optimistic of better days ahead.
“As a home-based business, we have been marketing in online spaces only, so we haven’t been able to penetrate the market as we would have liked because we don’t have many places to distribute our products.
“However, as of now, things are looking more positive and we are going to ramp up production as we are expecting to have more places to stock our products.’’
With the youth considered to be the creative pulse of society, youth start-ups have a critical role to play in reviving Zimbabwe economy therefore they must be supported in their early stages as the youth are also the biggest demographic group in the country, according to the last census,” Chipidza said.
