Matsomoli Mokhele, Nutritionist and founder of Khora Consumer Brands produces organic tea.

Matsomoli is an entrepreneur and founder of Khora Consumer brands, a start-up business located in Mafeteng, Lesotho. Matsomoli holds a bachelor’s in Nutrition and has extensive experience and knowledge in human nutrition, food science and technology, microbiology, food processing and product development.

“Mafube olive tea is a mixture of wild mint and wild olive trees found in Lesotho. I leveraged my experience in food science and my passion for health to come up with an intervention to combat the rising cases of nutrition-related-non-communicable diseases in Lesotho.”

She started her business during her time as a student at the National University of Lesotho (NUL) and later refined it under the tutelage of her supervisor at the NUL Innovation Hub, an incubation center that supports entrepreneurial ventures by students and members of the community.

“The Innovation Hub at NUL helped me acquire machinery to kick start mass production of our product, and tea was the most feasible product to go with although we had worked on other products”.

When she applied to join the YALI program, she wanted to take her business to greater heights and acquire new entrepreneurial skills. “When I applied to YALI, the business was ripe for rapture and I knew I needed to acquire new skills and attract new investors in the business to help us meet the growing demand for our products, and YALI offered me the tools l needed to succeed in my entrepreneurial journey.”

Matsomoli says the YALI program was an eye opener and has contributed to the success of her business. During the training, she learned a lot about running businesses, scaling up businesses, marketing, attracting investment and writing high quality business funding proposals. She found the preparatory session on pitching extremely helpful because while she had a fair understanding of pitching, the facilitators brought “new angles to it, and the opportunity to pitch our businesses before a panel was extremely beneficial and helpful.” Says Matsomoli

As part of her corporate social responsibility, Matsomoli is taking initiative to pass the knowledge she acquired through YALI to budding entrepreneurs in her community who are doing extremely well but have not been fortunate enough to be accepted into the YALI programs.

“Since graduating, I have taken the initiative to assist many inspiring entrepreneurs in my community. We host weekly sessions where we discuss various aspects of entrepreneurship. We cover topics like business growth, leadership, investment, and social responsibility.”

Qenase Nkoale, for instance, is one of the beneficiaries of the entrepreneurial masterclasses run by Matsomoli. She runs a fruit processing company and was recently accepted into NUL Innovation Hub to refine and scale up her business. “The Incubation Hub at NUL receives 1000s of applicants for each call, and to have been selected this year is overwhelming” noted Ms. Nkoale.

Matsomoli recently partnered with major retailers in Lesotho which will see her stock up her products in selected supermarkets in Maseru and Mafeteng. “We have an aggressive growth strategy that we are pursuing over the next 5 years that will see us become a game changer in Lesotho.”