The attempted coup by a section of the Kenya Air Force in 1982 marked a turning point for many people in the country. For Tony Sahni and his three sisters, a decision was made by the family that they would pursue their studies in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n
All his sisters got into professional careers and got married and Tony tried out different things: he got into business selling tea and coffee to hospitals, started a manufacturing business that did not work, started a trading company, and got employed.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I learned a lot,\u201d he reflects. \u201cI mean, what I learned during those eight years in the UK, I probably couldn\u2019t have learned in university. There, was hands on experience and practical experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Something in him kept calling him back to Kenya, where his father, Kishora Lal Sahni, had started Securex, the security services company, in 1970.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy heart was always here. So, I said to my dad, \u2018You know what? Enough is enough. My sisters are married. I will come back.\u2019 That\u2019s how I came back home,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
He started working at Securex but also partly ventured out on his own, setting up a hardware shop in Gikomba, acting as an agent for Bajaj, the Indian company, selling light bulbs and seeking to compete with Philips, the Dutch multinational. He also imported chocolates and dabbled in event organization.<\/p>\n
Tony was not always successful, but he sees these experiences as part of a learning process. In addition to burning his fingers, he also realized those ventures were not his passion, and he found that he always gravitated back to Securex, where he could see some gaps in the business.<\/p>\n
\u201cA couple of people came to me and said, \u2018You know, why aren\u2019t you looking at your own security business?\u2019 That\u2019s when I started focusing,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n
He became a research and development man and a salesman rolled into one. The research and development involved travelling to security exhibitions in the more developed parts of the world \u2013 New York, Taiwan, Shanghai – and seeing things he could bring back to Kenya. The sales involved going to downtown Nairobi, the neighbourhood of Gikomba, Kombo Munyiri Road, River Road to sell security Kirinyaga Road, and services.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of multinationals didn\u2019t want to deal with these people, and we saw a gap. So, we approached that market, and we scored. We grew very fast in that market,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
He also developed a strategy of going to every customer and ensuring that whatever time they called, Securex would respond within two hours and resolve the issue within 24 hours. Tony also took up the role of Chief Recruiter, interviewing every person who applied to be a security officer and then ensuring that he kept the door open for any member of the staff to bring their issues to them.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a very disorganized way of doing it. There was no structure around it. But slowly, things just fell in place,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
He credits the company\u2019s growth to the focus on innovation, customer care, and employee welfare.<\/p>\n
It also helped that as he embraced his multiple roles and worked to build the company, his father encouraged him and didn\u2019t mind the ventures, even when they turned out to be misadventures.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe gave me a lot of guidance. He always told me what the pros and the cons were, and then he let me make my decisions. I\u2019m not saying I made the right decisions,\u201d says Tony.<\/p>\n
Even when he made the wrong decisions, the old man would ask him to draw on the lessons learnt and move on.<\/p>\n
Running a family business founded by one of the parents involves creating a balance, if that is even possible, between the filial relationship and the business relationship. Fights between members of the family can be material to the business as they can disrupt it or result in irrational decisions made on the basis of emotions or vendettas.<\/p>\n
The father and son at the helm of Securex managed to fi a balance: the father carefully encouraging the son to make the right decisions and depending on his business acumen to grow the company.<\/p>\n
The elder Sahni is now 87 and can no longer go to the office every working day. He goes to his corner office at the modern, well-designed, and fitted office at 9 Riverside about three times a week but \u201che\u2019s still hands on but doesn\u2019t interfere with the business.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe doesn\u2019t come and interfere with the decision making. So we have a great relationship in the office. Sometimes we have arguments, but of this we still enjoy whisky together,\u201d says Tony.<\/p>\n
Tony\u2019s wife is also part of the business, working in the background and building processes and systems, and their son has now joined them.<\/p>\n
The youngest Sahni studied Electrical Engineering at the university, a business management course and then, without any push from his father, pursued a Masters in Counter-terrorism and Organized Crime.<\/p>\n
His father reckons that having so much of the family business in the background at home, with both parents discussing the business, the grandfather in the mix and this going on even when they are on holiday, somehow rubbed off on him, and his route back was almost natural.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s too early to say that the youngest Sahni will be taking over the business eventually, says Tony. The man who grew the business from 200 guards in 1991 to the current 7,000 by bringing in innovation customer care and attention to employee welfare is struggling to understand how his Generation Z son works.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do have our tussles as father and son,\u201d he admits, \u201cBecause one thing I\u2019ve got to realize is that this new generation have a very different way of working.\u201d<\/p>\n
He is yet to get used to being told to state what he wants done without dictating when and how it should be done, and his insistence that office hours start at 8am has been met with resistance.<\/p>\n
Tony has come up against the steep learning curve the older generation encounters in trying to work with Generation Z.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mindset, I have to now change this. So, I have to listen more because the reality is they have a different way of thinking. And even I need to adapt. And I can\u2019t keep on thinking the old school way, because those things will not work in the future,\u201d says Tony.<\/p>\n
The filial and business relationships aside, the fundamentals of the business remain, and Tony\u2019s vision is for Securex to be known less as the company that provides the ubiquitous guards at office buildings in cities and towns and more as the provider of security solutions.<\/p>\n
His next target is the middle class, and Tony spoke to Venture before Securex launched Rafiki, a range of affordable smart home products with security and lighting solutions. The typical Rafiki security kit is a box with an alarm system, door sensors, and a Closed-Circuit Television system, with a mobile phone application to monitor it. It can be bought off their website and an individual can install it for themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy goal is to target the woman of the house who can go to work and check her phone and see what her maid is doing with the children. If the child opens the door, the mother knows immediately. So, she can actually know what\u2019s happening in the house and she can focus on her work,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
He reckons that the current mindset of security being a man at the gate will change, as technology will put users in more control.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou will see a lot of technology coming in. Things like remote monitoring. People are going to use artificial intelligence. You will see cameras. So, if you need 20 security officers, you\u2019ll probably keep 10. But for the rest, you will use artificial intelligence, cameras, electronic locks, with remote monitoring companies sitting and monitoring your site sitting in an office. So, technology will play a big role, but people will never go,\u201d he predicts.<\/p>\n
Securex has just turned 50, and while the growth can be credited to Tony and his father, with their combined personalities and characteristics, the business has evolved from being a purely family business to something else.<\/p>\n
While he still drives the vision, looking at new products and innovations and leaving his door open for employees in the ways he knows best, he has ceded a lot of power to managers and is well aware that the old disorganized way cannot work, and things cannot just fall into place.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a very good team of managers. You hold them responsible, give them decision making powers and they work for you. They run the show for you,\u201d he concludes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As a young man, Tony Sahni dabbled in various businesses in UK, but none of them were ever the right fit, until he came back home to Kenya.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":[20],"meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-power-talks","format-article"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.oxygenehosting.com\/live-kcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.oxygenehosting.com\/live-kcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.oxygenehosting.com\/live-kcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.oxygenehosting.com\/live-kcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.oxygenehosting.com\/live-kcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/demo.oxygenehosting.com\/live-kcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":153,"href":"https:\/\/demo.oxygenehosting.com\/live-kcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions\/153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.oxygenehosting.com\/live-kcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.oxygenehosting.com\/live-kcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.oxygenehosting.com\/live-kcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.oxygenehosting.com\/live-kcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.oxygenehosting.com\/live-kcb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/format?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}