Peter Nduati, a seasoned Kenyan entrepreneur, business leader and philanthropist, is not your normal tycoon. After all, there is nothing normal about making your first legit million at 24 years.

A go-getter with a knack for breaking industry ceilings, Nduati is a maverick when it comes to starting business ventures.

“I went into my main business, insurance, after working for the market leader in the space. You hit the glass ceiling in the business. You try and introduce ideas in the products to your employer, but for some reasons — sometimes political — the product is rejected. You are young and you decide ‘why can’t I go out and do this for myself?'” This statement by Nduati on TV47’s ‘The Arena – Founders Battlefield’ speaks to the very never-say-die attitude that has catapulted him to entrepreneurship stardom.

As a certified chartered insurer, Nduati once held the role of General Manager at AAR Insurance. But after years of experience in the field, observing the exisiting insurance providers in the early 2000s, Nduati concluded that they were not offering flexible and/or comprehensive medical insurance products.

Nduati tried to introduce what he says were “new ideas” to his employer but was unsuccessful. And when he saw his ideas being shoved, he called it quits and decided to do them himself.

“Fortunately, the employer who I had worked for in the industry had exposed me to the East African market, so I had worked in different countries,” Nduati says, adding that “Even when I registered my first business, I had to put East Africa on it, although it was downtown in a kasmall room.”

But even before hitting the ground running, Nduati kept asking himself, “can this be a KSh1 billion business?” This was a very vital aspect of his journey to being a billionaire.

But how did he raise the capital to start his first business? Did he pinpoint a particular untapped potential in the insurance field?

“Bootstrapping, raising capital… I raised money from friends and family. I was entering an industry that was unregulated. It was in the insurance space but the category ‘health insurance’ was unregulated. Previously there was companies called HMOs that came and left, a lot of white people led those organisations.”

A rookie in as far as leading a newly-formed company is concerned, Nduati was competing with Chief Eexecutive Officers who were white in origin, who had an advantage over him because they were able to penetrate in places that “I could not get into.”

But this did not deter him even for a minute. He kept the faith, utilised his experience, and remain upbeat because he knew he was young, and had all the time for trial and error.

“I took 18 months to raise the capital required. I took myself to the regulator and said how do we regulate this particular space? That industry is now fully regulated but me and two other people went and said, ‘look we want to get regulated because being regulated helps confidence. When you are doing a service business, it is about you and what people perceive of your brand’. Within four years, I knew it was the right business we had broken even, my partners could see value. Fortunately, two of the investors in my business were also insurers so they were not only mentoring me in the space but they could also see the journey.”

And with that humble beginnings, Nduati — six years after running it — found himself raising capital again, just so he can expand his business scope.

“Back in the market raising money because you want to grow…. get out of that small space in city centre, to get your own space, to opening a branch in Nakuru, Kisumu, Mombasa. One of the errors I made is that I was so focused in beating my former employer. Even when we became bigger I surpassed it and it was a very narrow vision at that particular time.”

In 2008, Nduati decided to expand his insurance business out of Kenya at the height of the 2007-2008 Post-Election Violence.

At the time, the Kenyan economy, Nduati insists, had tanked and therefore the need to urgently diversify to a different audience and spread your risk across. Having an experience of the Tanzanian market because he had worked in the East African country for his former employer, Nduati was upbeat about this new venture.

“Tanzania was my ideal place because I had worked in Tanzania for my former employer. I go to Tanzania and they tell me they can’t accept my brand because it doesn’t have the word insurance in the business name. I had to register a company with the word insurance in it. I had to become a general insurer because they didn’t have a category for health insurance. You are been forced to bring new skills, you have to understand the culture, and you have to explain to them Bima Ya Afya. We did well in Tanzania because we understood and studied it, but still we didn’t have data. In Uganda there was no regulation.”