Secret Sauce it’s all in the

Every summer, Olayemi Aganga watched the marula tree outside the window of his home in Botswana produce hundreds of kilograms of fruit. His neighbors treated the windfall like a nuisance, but Aganga saw something else: an opportunity.

Marula is indigenous to Botswana, and one piece of the fruit contains eight times the Vitamin C of an orange. But instead of being used for food, oil is extracted from the seed and used in the cosmetic industry, while the pulp – 300 tons of fruit for every 12 tons of oil – is discarded.

What if instead, Aganga wondered, all that native fruit was turned into food?

Aganga started experimenting with recipes, harvesting the fruit from the tree outside his house and turning it into jam.

“I was able to get my hands in the dirt, so to speak,” he said.

Once he had a formula perfected, he shared a sample with his long-time friend, Bonolo Monthe. What he handed her was a jar of jam, but she saw something else: an opportunity. Aganga wanted to turn the jam into a business, and she wanted to help him do it.

“I tasted the jam, and I caught the vision immediately,” Monthe said. “We both agreed it was time for a big rebranding project for this fruit.”

Monthe had grown up working in her family’s businesses – a bakery, a butchery, and a specialized grocery store – and that influence gave her the courage and confidence to jump into a new entrepreneurial venture. The fact that she was bored out of her mind in her job as an HR recruiter didn’t hurt, either.

“That leap of faith to quit my job and say yes to Yemi, I think my parents’ example helped me,” Monthe said. “That appreciation has fueled my drive and my motivation to keep going when it doesn’t make sense. My family gave me the courage to try something new and be something different.”

Monthe and Aganga started harvesting marula fruit wherever and whenever they could find it – including on the side of the road with Aganga in a three-piece suit on his way home from his day job as a lawyer. They cooked the jam in their home kitchens and sold it at markets and to friends and family. In 2019, their little company, Maungo Craft, was incubated by a local enterprise authority, and they were able to secure space for an industrial kitchen.

Still looking for more capital – and customers – Monthe and Aganga entered Maungo Craft in a Pan-African entrepreneurial challenge called GoGettaz. Short-listed out of 3,000 applicants, the duo took their product to the finals of the competition in Ghana.

Reaching the final stage of the competition was a thrill, but there were even more surprises ahead. One of the sponsors of the competition was a graduate of the David Eccles School of Business who told all the finalists he would sponsor anyone interested in applying to the school’s brand new Master of Business Creation (MBC) program.

Monthe and Aganga knew it was an opportunity they couldn’t let pass them by. Monthe applied for the program and was accepted. She completed her degree online, staying up late into the night to attend classes virtually, and then running the growing business with Aganga during the day. The business partners often listened to the courses and tackled many class projects and assignments together. Aganga was even invited to present a guest lecture on international law.

The best part about the program, Monthe said, was that it was completely focused on their business, and everything they learned had a direct and immediate application. And, perhaps most importantly, the mentorship, encouragement, and support of the MBC network not only validated the business idea Monthe and Aganga had given so much to already, but helped them polish and refine it.

“There was a lot of help thinking through our problems,” Aganga said, “which was good because we were coming up with new problems every day.”

The biggest problem to hit Maungo Craft was the onset of COVID-19. The company lost 95% of their business during the pandemic. Using what they had learned in the MBC program, Monthe and Aganga pivoted away from jam and started producing more widely popular items including sauces, syrups, and fruit leather.

“The sauce literally saved our business,” Monthe said.