Lilian Katiso is a Kenyan entrepreneur and accountant who owns three flower and plant shops in Uganda.
She has been featured in various Ugandan prominent newspapers as a result of her business, including being named one of Uganda’s top 40 inspiring and important women under 40.
However, when she initially arrived to Uganda from Nanyuki, Katiso was an accountant with a degree from Daystar University in Athi River, Kenya, a vocation she pursued for over a decade.
She got accounting jobs through referrals and social media after a non-governmental organization she was working for lost its financing.
Katiso described the life-changing events that occurred nine years ago after she lost her work, noting that her curiosity about an article in the newspaper marked the start of her next trip.
“I saw an article about someone growing herbs and I thought it was very interesting and unique so I wrote to the editor to ask for the contact of the person. On the same email, someone else was asking for strawberries and I happened to have been growing some so I offered to give them away. When the writer came to my place, she was impressed with my plants and wrote a story about my small garden,” she narrated.
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After the article, others who were interested in the plants contacted her, and as the phone calls continued, she decided to establish a company selling plants to others.
“When I started out, I was calling it green gifts and gardening because people buy bouquets of flowers and they die within a week yet if you gift someone an orchid, it stays for a long time.
“A plant you give someone keeps on growing, it is a gift that keeps on giving. And later on, I changed the name to Maua and More because they were more than just flowers,” she added.
Katiso had subsequently built three outlets, growing more than 5,000 plant varieties and collaborating with several institutions, including Garden City in Uganda, to provide jobs for other Ugandan professionals.
As her business grew, so did her clientele, and she began selling to various cooperative institutions looking to improve the atmosphere for their staff while also decorating.
Katiso added that some of the flowers she sold were imported from the Netherlands, Thailand, and other nations because to the growing demand for exotic flora.
“Now I am growing 5,000 species. The business was growing and the speed at which we were selling was higher than the speed at which the plants were growing, so I started buying from other people. Over time cooperate organisations wanted the flowers too because of the idea of greening the office,” she stated.
Katiso encouraged other entrepreneurs to identify holes in their preferred professions and devise solutions to do what they enjoy while earning a solid living.
