At 24 years, Wilkins Fadhili got his breakthrough when he was invited to be one of the speakers at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, hosted in Kenya and attended by then US President Barrack Obama.
Mr Fadhili was at the time the CEO of Fashion Torch Africa, an incubation hub for upcoming Fashion and Creative Arts entrepreneurs.
He later evolved the business and started Startup Now, a company that connect start-up businesses to investors.
In 2015, he was named in Kenya’s top 40 under 40 list, for his company Fashion Torch Africa and the company named as one of Kenya’s fast-rising company’s in East and Central Africa.
In 2016, he joined Blaze Kenya, a mentorship programme started by Safaricom to encourage self employment among the youth.
Fadhili presents himself as a brand strategist and a start up developer, and true to it, he has worked with various celebrities.
Some of his clients listed include Larry Madowo, Usain Bolt, Suzzie Beauty, Cold Stone Creamery, Edith Kimani, Flair by Betty among others.
Despite having a ‘multi-million’ company, Fadhili’s companies have no official website and he uses a wix site to market his services.
In a past interview seen by Kahawa Tungu, the entrepreneur said that those interested in being incubated have to part with at least Sh30,000 for training and mentoring for 10 months.
The money allows them the opportunity to pitch their ideas to secure funding from interested investors, he said.
Some of the images posted on his timeline are pictures taken from other websites and posted as his own. Something close to what former NTV presenter Kobi Kihara was doing. Her’s she said was “curated content.”
Here are some examples:
Fadhili’s story is quite similar to that of billionaire Heshan de Silva, CEO De Silva Group. His source of riches changed from one interview to the next which led Glass House PR to let him go.
While dropping him as a client, founder and managing director Mary Njoki Glass House PR said; “Glass House PR will no longer represent Heshan De Silva the brand due to… ambiguity and inconsistency presented by the brand.”
In 2013, the young billionaire rose to fame after he claimed that he had sold Africa’s largest tea processing factory to Unilever for Sh2.4 billion.
Jumping from one television interview to another, he assured viewers that Unilever would publicly announce the sale, six years later the announcement is yet to come.
De Silva has since disappeared from the public eye as has Ms Kihara who received flak for picking images from Pinterest.
Kihara went as far as deleting her social media accounts after fans called her out for downloading a child’s image and posting on her page.
It is important to note that while, Mr Fadhili started out as the CEO Fashion Torch Africa, a project that got him Sh16.5 million from a US company 1608 Creatives, he has since started two other companies, StartUp Now and is now launching yet another project Brand Lab, all with no known addresses.
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