Dennis Ameso: From selling mitumba clothes to owning a luxury car hire fleet

Dennis Ameso, 33, firstborn among four siblings, was born and brought up in Kongowea, Mombasa.

At a young age, he developed an interest in cars and would make toys using wires and sticks, like many children of his age.

After going through Kongowea Primary School, Tudor Day Secondary and doing his certificate in business management at Christian Industrial Centre in Buxton, his uncle introduced him to the fashion industry.

While selling clothes at his uncle’s shop, which he named Vikali Fashions on Moi Avenue, he met Steve Kinyanjui, a friend who would inspire him to join the motor world.

Because of his dressing style, he got the nickname ‘Vikali,’ slang for good flashy clothes.

“Kinyanjui intrigued me. He always came to the shop and bought a lot of good clothes (vikali) and did not haggle over the price. So I asked him what he does and he told me he ran a car hire company. I instinctively knew the business had to be making a lot of money,” Ameso said.

This stirred his latent love for cars.

Ameso would frequently visit Kinyanjui’s company offices in Tudor as their friendship grew, learning titbits about the car hire business.

About a year after meeting, Ameso, who was 24 years old, started looking for clients for Kinyanjui, while spreading word to his clothes clients that he ran a car hire business.

This helped him form a clientele.

“So those clients were passing through me to go to Kinyanjui but most did not know this. They believed the cars were mine,” Ameso said.

With time he started looking for his own cars to hire out.

At 26 years, he quit working at his uncle’s clothes shop to start his own car hire business.

He started with a Toyota Vitz, a car given to him to manage by a woman whom shared his vision.

However, he had formed something like a partnership with Coast Executive Car Hire, whose owner Samuel Aduda, was his friend.

Since Aduda was busy, he entrusted his company and cars to Ameso to manage, giving Ameso considerable experience in car management and expanding his clientele.

He acquired two more cars, expanding his own fleet to three.

He partnered with a friend to form San Cuba Company, combining their fleets to make eight cars. They opened an office.

As his experience grew, Ameso acquired nine more cars, expanding his fleet to 12 (his friend’s not included), all given to him to manage. Such was the level of trust people had in him.

“When I got 12 cars, I decided to register my own company, Dakena Motors Limited East and Central Africa. That is when I started buying my own cars,” Ameso said.

Currently, he has a fleet of 25 cars, ranging from down-market vehicles like Nissan March, Toyota Passo, Daihatsu Mira, to middle-class vehicles like Premio, Axio, Allion, Mark X, Crown, to luxury vehicles including Toyota V8, Prado, Lexus, Mercedes Benz and Range Rovers.

“I am optimistic we will one day be able to hire out limousines, choppers and private jets,” Ameso said.

The business, he said, is high risk, high reward in nature, with a fair share of its challenges.

“It is a very risky business and that is why not many people would dare venture into it,” Ameso said.

He said the most significant period of the business he has ever gone through is when one of the cars was involved in an accident at Shelly Beach in Likoni.

At the time, the car had third-party insurance and not comprehensive meaning compensation was tricky.

The car was written off but luckily the hirer was not seriously injured.

“If the client was injured seriously, disabled or killed, we would have been in deep trouble,” he said.

He said some clients are generally a nuisance, sometimes going to places they did not disclose and refusing to pay as per the agreement.

“We charge differently if a client goes out of the county. Sometimes they fail to disclose they will be moving out of the county and fail to return the car in time, then they come and dump the car at our yard when we are not around,” Ameso said.

Luckily, he said, none of their cars has ever been stolen because they do thorough vetting before they give them out.

He said he is a prayerful man and God is the source of all wisdom.

His seeking of God’s guidance in the business has helped him navigate through difficult times and avoiding huge losses.

“Even God says in the Bible ‘My people are suffering because of lack of knowledge’. Knowledge is to know God first,” he said.

He said knowing God will help one avoid hacking people with pangas, respect the young and the old and know one should only enjoy own sweat.

He has three employees in his business, with eventual casual workers hired to sometimes do thorough cleaning of the cars.

He has a specific mechanic to whom he takes all his 25 cars for service.

“At Dakena Motors, we listen to our clients and we are fast in responding to their needs and wants. We are also brutally honest. If we don’t have a car for our client, we tell them. We don’t try to get them cars from other places unless they ask us to or allow us to if we suggest to them,” Ameso said.

He said, contrary to popular belief, there are many jobs young people can do in Kenya, just that most do not want to think outside the box.

Many of the young people today, he said, wait for white collar jobs, whose space is shrinking. Most businesses, because of the economic situation, are downsizing.

Business, he said, is the way to go and advised young people to start small and micro businesses and build themselves up. “And in everything you do, you must start small and build yourself up,” Ameso said.

He reproached young people today who want to get rich quickly.

“There is no shortcut. You have to go through the process if you want to be successful for the long haul.

“It took me almost two years after starting this business to get my first car, which was not even mine but given to me to manage, and it took me almost 10 years to get 25 cars,” he said.

Now, he lives a lifestyle akin to his nickname.