Given his strong background in information technology, Daniel intends to use his expertise to leverage on his proposed farm processing activities.
Farmer. Agribusiness entrepreneur. Computer expert. Real estate businessman. Despite his humble beginnings, Daniel ole Ting’a is all these and more.
Born in 1975 to Mary Ting’a and the late Moses Ting’a, Daniel was raised in Isinya Oiborr village of Keekonyokie South Location in Kajiado West constituency. His father was polygamous, with a large family consisting of four wives. Daniel had 22 siblings; his own mother had four children.
After receiving his early education at Isinya Primary School, he proceeded to Matasia High School, which was later transformed into a girl school. Thereafter, he attended college in Nairobi before finding his way to the United States in 2004.
Foreign education
Daniel’s studies abroad saw him acquire a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Statistics from the Southwestern Adventist University in Keene, Texas, and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Texas in Dallas.
Today, Daniel shuttles frequently between the US and Kenya, taking care of his varied interests in the two countries.
He is the proprietor of Dantinol Inc., the parent company of his varied interests registered in both Kenya and the US with its head office in Dallas, US with plans to expand to other countries.
Above technology and agri-business, he hopes the firm will continue to have a positive impact on the youth, through hiring local expertise and advising young people on careers in the broader information, communication and technology (ICT). Daniel says, Kenya is home of the top Startups in Sub-Saharan Africa, and dominates the market in app development. With that in mind, Africa as whole is facing its own challenges in startups ecosystem and wealth creation locally, an area he looks forward to making a significant contribution, leveraging the “Necessity Vs Convenience” approach.
His interests span real estate, farming, and ICT. He has invested in real estate in Kajiado, Narok, Nairobi, Laikipia and elsewhere. His firm is involved in buying, investing and later selling the properties in partnership with developers in the real estate sector.
Farming interests
Lipempe Farms, his farming enterprise, takes care of his 216-acre farm in Kajiado, where he has setup and ready to transfer and plant 49,000 Hass avocado seedlings ready. He is also has interests in macadamia, herbs, and livestock rearing.
Daniel plans to begin an avocado oil-processing factory in the near future. Apart from avocados from his own farm, the factory will obtain supplies from local farmers in Nakuru, Murang’a, and Nyeri.
“The bigger challenge is the pricing and quality of the products. “Recently, we have seen Kenya almost banned off the international market because of the export of immature avocados and other products, and a quagmire we’ll try not to find ourselves in,” said Daniel.
His greatest area of passion, however, is in ICT. As an integrator and Key SME in Setting up Center of Excellence (CoE) cross ERP, CRM, Cloud Offerings & Custom App development, across Industry vertical with specific expertise and global templates for, discrete manufacturing, telecommunication, Professional Services, construction, chemicals, Medical Technology, Pharma and Aerospace and Defense with successful projects deployment that varies in size and scope including global, Fortune 10, and midsize organizations.
Technology
“Technology is very dynamic and changes very frequent, you go to sleep tonight and you wake up you will find something new in the world of technology,” says Daniel. As such, the firm is also keen to ensure that clients understand the importance of adapting to changes in technology and the need to be agile and flexible to compete. Hence, Africa Large corporations must be able to have transformation strategies in order to adopt new tools and process, continuous evaluation of their customer needs and be prepared to address security concern, enhance data collection, and a better customer experience.
“We have a huge interest in ICT. Dantinol Inc. has a consulting unit that mainly deals with enterprise applications which we deploy with Enterprise Resource Planning tools, Cloud Applications and App development. We also venture into finding and funding start-ups locally,” said Daniel.
Indeed, given his strong background in information technology, Daniel intends to use his expertise to leverage on his proposed farm processing activities. “We can set up our own systems. If everything goes according to plan, in the long term we’ll transition into robotic processing, which will help us save in terms of factory lead times, delivery of products to customer on time, reduce labor costs which will reduce operational overheads, thus increasing revenue.”
Ease of Doing Business in Kenya.
Despite these successes, Daniel says that doing business in Kenya is not a walk in the park. The bureaucracy, he says, is daunting. Moreover, the culture of bribery and extortion makes it difficult to do clean business and succeed.
Politics:
The trend in Kenya has been for successful business people tend to venture into politics. But Daniel completely refuses to consider moving in that direction. His future is not in politics, he says, but in expanding his company and business interests.
“We all can still make meaningful contributions, that has huge impacts in transforming our society in our ‘OWN QUITE WAYS’”, not always via politics. Said Daniel.
