For Dennis Karema, the difference between running a business and building one that can matter at scale is impact.

“If I built a business that serves five people, yes, there is a little impact in that village. But what if I could build a business that serves 100 million farmers? Then that is actually part of transforming a continent.”

It is an ambition that was sparked by watching his grandmother’s tea leaves wither at a collection centre in Murang’a, eventually seeing him build a cold-chain business that now operates across 17 Kenyan counties and has begun crossing national borders.

SokoFresh, the company he co-founded in 2019 and where he is chief executive, has expanded into Seychelles and Madagascar, while also onboarding smallholder farmer groups in Uganda and Ethiopia. It is fielding interest from partners in West Africa looking to apply its solar-powered cold-storage model to perishable food chains.

But Mr Karema's entrepreneurship journey has not been easy. For years, SokoFresh struggled to gain traction.

“Then in 2025, we started to see real growth and traction,” Mr Karema says, explaining that it took time to educate the market, demonstrate that the technology worked and show farmers that it could save them from substantial food and financial losses.

That period of slow growth, he says, also taught him something about entrepreneurship: having a solution to a problem is not enough.

The business has to be designed to reach enough people for the solution to have meaningful impact.

Wasted crop turns into a business idea

Mr Karema says when he began researching post-harvest losses based on his experience at his grandmother's farm during his holiday visits as a schoolboy, it gave him a tangible understanding of a problem that affected farmers far beyond the tiny village.

Yet agriculture was not an obvious destination having studied computer science at Kenyatta University. He had chosen the course because of his fascination with emerging technologies, but says his deeper interest was business.

“I’ve always felt that being an entrepreneur gives one the ability to make a real difference.”

Three years after graduating in 2008, he enrolled for an MBA at the University of Nairobi. His motivation was not simply to acquire another qualification, but to understand how businesses are built and, more importantly, how they scale.

In 2018, he joined Enviu, a global venture-building studio that researches and incubates social enterprises. There, his work on food systems exposed him to the structural weaknesses running through agricultural value chains.

His research into post-harvest losses, he says, suggested that cold storage alone would not solve the problem. Farmers also needed reliable market access, technology partners and ways of creating value from produce that failed to meet conventional market standards.

That research eventually led him out of Enviu and into SokoFresh in late 2019. The company, co-founded with Enviu, began focusing on rural cold-chain infrastructure, using solar-powered mobile cold rooms to bring storage closer to farmers.

Scale requires adaptation

Mr Karema says building a viable business around the cold chain business required experimentation.

One of the company’s early missteps came when it installed cold storage around Lake Victoria in an attempt to serve the fishing industry. The need for cooling, he says, was obvious, but the business case was not.

“We set up cold storage in Lake Victoria, aiming to extend our cooling services to the fish value chain. Over a period of six months, we realised that though there was a need, the volumes of fish from wild catch were not sufficient to support our model. So, we pivoted from fish to poultry,” he says.

SokoFresh CEO Denis Karema explains the cooling system of a solar-powered mobile cold storage unit at the company’s facility in Kibiku, Kiambu County, on August 5, 2026. The units are designed to help reduce post-harvest food losses among smallholder farmers.
Photo credit: Bonface Bogita | Nation Media Group

The lesson, he points out, was that identifying a genuine problem was only the first step. There also had to be sufficient volumes and a viable commercial structure around it.

The avocado business brought another lesson when in 2024, SokoFresh was offering market access for avocados when global shipping challenges made it difficult to get fruit to European Union markets in good condition.

Mr Karema says that rather than continue pushing into a market where long transit times were eroding the value of the produce, the company shifted its focus to the United Arab Emirates, where shipping times were shorter.

“In 2024, we are offering market access for avocado and there were global challenges with shipping fruit to EU markets. This led to losses due to long shipment times, compromising the fruit quality. We pivoted to serving UAE markets where the shipping time is shorter,” he says.

For Mr Karema, such experiences have become part of the process of learning how to build a business that can grow beyond its original assumptions.

Building cold storage

Today, SokoFresh operates 40 cold-storage units, representing more than $1 million (Sh129.3 million) in assets. The company says it has onboarded slightly below 20,000 farmers across different value chains in Kenya and established cold-chain services in 17 counties.

The units, assembled at the company’s facility in Wangige, Kiambu County, resemble shipping containers and can be transported by lorry to locations where farmers and traders need them.

They can hold up to 5,000 kilogrammes of produce, while their solar-powered refrigeration systems allow them to operate in remote areas where conventional electricity infrastructure may be unavailable.

The company works with cooperatives growing French beans, herbs such as basil and thyme, and farmers aggregating high-value fruits.

Rather than simply selling the cold rooms, SokoFresh generally provides storage as a service. Customers can take monthly commercial leases costing roughly Sh80,000, cooperatives can use infrastructure leases, or users can pay Sh2 per kilogramme of produce stored. For smallholders who harvest intermittently, the pay-to-store model allows several farmers to share space.

Technology is also central to the company’s effort to make the model scalable. Each refrigeration engine has a SIM card that allows the engineering team to monitor the units remotely using Internet of Things technology.

“We are able to manage all the parameters of a cold storage that is currently in a place like Ileret in Marsabit from our office because it’s a smart device,” Mr Karema says.

The system allows the team to adjust temperatures remotely and receive alerts when, for example, dust on solar panels affects power efficiency or a door is left open.

The implication for a company seeking to expand across countries is significant: a unit does not necessarily require a technician to travel from Nairobi every time an adjustment is needed.

The insulated interior of a solar-powered mobile cold storage unit under construction at SokoFresh’s facility in Kibiku, Kiambu County, on August 5, 2026.
Photo credit: Bonface Bogita | Nation Media Group

From Kenya to Africa

The company recently expanded into Seychelles and Madagascar, while its teams are also working with farmer groups in Uganda and Ethiopia.

SokoFresh generates between 300 and 500 direct jobs annually for local gig workers involved in harvesting logistics, market access and cold-room operations. Its full-time corporate staff comprises 24 professionals.

The company has also begun attracting external capital in the form of debt and equity, while commercial banks that have historically been cautious about rural agricultural ventures are increasingly offering structured financing to farmers seeking to use its technology.

“We’ve moved from where we had to go and tell everyone what we do and try to convince them to where people know the solution is there, it works, and now they are happy to come and team up with us,” Mr Karema says.

The shift from convincing the market to having the market seek out the solution marks one of the most important changes in SokoFresh’s six-year journey. But Mr Karema is also candid about what slowed that journey.

The cost of thinking too small

Asked what he would have done differently, he does not point first to technology, financing or market conditions. He points to himself.

“What delayed my growth was taking too long before thinking and building for scale maybe because of lack of self-belief, but I have since worked on the imposter mindset,” he says.

He credits curiosity, learning from experts, human-centred design and having the right team among the things he got right. He also acknowledges the importance of a support system, including his family and a small group of fellow entrepreneurs with whom he could exchange ideas.

SokoFresh plans to build 1,000 cold rooms across Africa by 2030, representing about $30 million (Sh3.9 billion) in assets.

“We are building 1,000 cold rooms across Africa by 2030; that’s $30 million (Sh3.9 billion) in assets, and this is a significant step toward post-harvest loss reduction, but still a drop in the ocean of what’s possible as we scale and build strategic partnerships in new partners,” he says.

→ eondieki@ke.nationmedia.com