Slawek Muturi, a Kenyan-Polish man flies the Kenyan flag high as a prominent entrepreneur in Poland.
Muturi is a big name when it comes to rental apartments in Poland, a dream he always held since he was a young man.
He was born of a Kenyan father who was a lecturer at a university in Poland while his mother is Polish.
Together with like-minded investors, Muturi saved up for years with a lot of toil and zeal before quitting his job in 2009 to pursue his new journey in entrepreneurship.
When he looks back, he has no iota of regret as he lives a full life from the rental income that he gets from his real estate venture named Mzuri which has more than 100 rental apartments.
Speaking to the Standard, he said that he always wanted to invest in the sector back in Kenya but the competition and amount of investment was too high.
However. He decided to take his business in Poland where the environment was not as hostile as Kenya’s was.
“I had wanted to invest in Kenya because, after all, the first business lessons that I learned were from my entrepreneurial uncle, but because of the hostile business environment then, I opted for Poland,” he said.
Properties in Poland, he said, were relatively affordable compared to Kenya and had good returns which is not the case back in Kenya.
He says that such an investment is a nice way to spend your retirement and cautioned Kenyans against relying on pension.
Muturi insisted on the culture of saving and buying property which will then generate revenue to push you through when one retires.
“Let’s assume someone receives 2,100 zlotys (Sh55,000) a month – that is much more than most get, but it still does not give a retiree much room to live their best life.
“This is how I calculate it. If I put down 1,000 zlotys (Sh26,000), after 100 months (just over eight years), I could buy a studio apartment using my savings and a small loan, and rent it out.”
With just one studio apartment, it is possible to make some more money and buy a second one, he added.
“This means that after 30 years of work, one can rely on retirement earnings from the rentals for three or four apartments, and can bank on at least Sh104,000 a month.”
The art of sacrifice, he went on, is what got him to owning 100 apartments in Poland something he says he was taught by his late uncle.
But how exactly did he do this?
“When I got my salary of 7.2 million zlotys (Sh192 million) from the Arthur Andersen International consulting firm, after deducting expenses, I converted the rest into dollars ($22,000) and opened a foreign account,” he said.
He bought his first apartment in Warsaw City Centre for Ksh2.2 million ($22,000) and used the rental income and some savings to buy a second one. From here, he went on to own more than 100 others.
With Mzuri firm which he founded, he manages 6,000 properties in Poland and his friends have added properties into his firm with about 200 employees.