Premium
Entrepreneur turns networking into opportunities for Kenyan SMEs
Eric Obwaka, founder of The King of Business Networking Academy, addresses entrepreneurs during a networking forum.
You've probably seen this play out before. A friend starts a business with a genuinely good product, pours in long hours, but still can't seem to get past the first trickle of customers. Meanwhile, someone else running a fairly similar business seems to land client after client without much visible effort.
Eric Obwaka, a business networking expert, has watched this pattern repeat itself for years. Obwaka is the founder of the King of Business Networking Academy, a venture that helps businesses build networks that translate to sales. He says that the real gap holding back small businesses in the country isn't a shortage of funding, but a shortage of access to the right people at the right time.
"Most people in business complaining about a lack of business don't know that there's a new currency in town called social capital," he says, framing the problem not as one of ambition or effort, but of awareness.
Social capital, as he defines it, is the value created when a stranger becomes a friend, a friend becomes a working relationship, and that relationship eventually produces a referral or a sale.
“It doesn't appear on any balance sheet, and no accountant will ever list it as an asset, yet it quietly decides how far a business can travel,” says Obwaka, adding that a company with modest capital but a wide, well-tended network can regularly outperform a better-funded rival that nobody outside its own circle has ever heard of.
Recognising the gap was one thing; building something to close it was another.
His company is a platform organised around three components. The first is coaching and mentorship, teaching business owners how to network with intention rather than simply showing up somewhere and hoping opportunity finds them. The second is a calendar of themed events that deliberately gather complementary groups under one roof, real estate developers alongside contractors and material suppliers, or lawyers alongside doctors, so the people in the room are already likely to need one another. The third is a screening method Obwaka applies before making any introduction, which he calls MAN: Money, Authority and Need. Before connecting two people, he weighs whether the prospective partner has the money to buy, the authority to decide, and a genuine need for what's on offer. "If somebody has all those three things," he explains, "it's easy to sell to them."
Eric Obwaka.
That structure is what he says sets his events apart from the standard networking circuit. Unlike open, unstructured mixers where attendees mostly circulate business cards and small talk, each of Obwaka's events is built around a specific topic designed to draw a particular crowd—diaspora investment, sales strategy, or a niche professional pairing. Guest speakers are deliberately chosen from among people ordinary attendees would struggle to reach on their own. The goal, as he puts it, is to place business owners in the same room as people who can genuinely move their revenue forward, rather than simply padding out a contact list.
“The general networking events draw over 100 attendees, and larger gatherings, such as a recent real estate dinner, have brought together up to 230 people spanning developers, contractors and material suppliers,” he says.
Within BNI, the referral organisation he belongs to, Obwaka has led his chapter in sponsoring new members and generating business referrals for three consecutive years, and this year he was voted the best member across East Africa.
His most recent real estate dinner brought together developers, contractors and building material suppliers into a single room, a sector where one well-timed introduction can translate directly into a signed construction contract.
Some of those outcomes have gone well beyond the restocked register. The platform has also functioned as a doorway into new markets. A multinational construction firm led by BNI member Viren Shah expanded its operations into Kenya partly through connections made inside Obwaka's network, and Obwaka personally helped the company locate land for a new factory—a case where a networking introduction preceded an actual investment decision.
His organisation currently engages six virtual assistants managing digital marketing, event confirmations, photography, videography and graphic design.
"I have a bias to give jobs to young people," he says—a preference also shaping a business process outsourcing venture he is developing, expected to bring on at least three more young professionals once it launches.
But none of this was the original plan. Long before the business, when he was just 20 years old, he ran an IT repair company called Computer Doctors, founded in 2000 after fellow students at Kenyatta University kept bringing him their broken machines to fix, eventually giving him the nickname that would later become the company's own name.
Over the following two decades, the business grew from computer repair into internet installation, and then, during the Covid-19 pandemic, into CCTV installation for homes, offices and construction sites, including a service letting Kenyans abroad remotely monitor their properties and elderly parents back home.
It was during that same pandemic period that Obwaka noticed a second, unrelated pattern emerging around him. People weren't only bringing him broken computers—they were asking him to connect them to opportunities, whether a client, a supplier, or a mentor.
He recognised a genuine gap for structured, intentional networking, distinct from the informal mixers most business owners already knew and had largely written off as ineffective. He built the King of Business Networking Academy around that recognition, formalising an instinct for connecting people that he had practised, unpaid, for years before anyone thought to pay for it.
The Academy earns its revenue through several channels. The first is event ticket sales, set so small business owners aren't priced out before they've had a chance to benefit.
The second, and generally larger, channel is corporate sponsorship. Various companies have backed recent events in exchange for stage time and direct access to attendees, giving sponsors a stream of qualified leads while keeping ticket prices affordable for everyone else.
The third channel is paid training and mentorship delivered directly to businesses and professional groups, alongside referral-based introductions.
The company has lined up a series of events in the coming months for the entrepreneurs.
July brings the Kenya Sales Summit, followed by an AI summit connecting technology experts with business owners and agencies, a youth summit in August, and a series of professional networking dinners.
Follow our WhatsApp channel for breaking news updates and more stories like this.
