By Ben Musanje
Alice Karugaba has shared the emotional and eye-opening story of how she rose from a struggling mother of four to the head of Nina Interiors Limited, now regarded as one of Kampala’s leading furniture brands.
Karugaba was testifying about her business journey during the Promoting Enterprise Growth and Recruitment event organized by Enterprise Uganda, where she spoke candidly about survival, risk-taking and painful mistakes that shaped her success.
Long before she entered the furniture industry, Karugaba was battling financial pressure at home. With four children to raise and limited income, she turned to baking buns from her kitchen as a way to survive. She had no baking experience but learned quickly and perfected her recipe within days.
She began selling the buns at her workplace in a multi-storey office building. Demand exploded almost instantly.
“They were finished on my floor,” she recalled. “People were buying two, three, even six at a time.”
What began as a small kitchen hustle quickly turned into a steady income stream. She supplied small shops and coffee outlets, and for the first time she felt financially independent.
“If I’ve ever felt financially independent, it was that time when I was baking,” she said.
However, when factory bread returned to the market, she stopped baking instead of continuing with her profitable buns — a decision she now calls one of her biggest early mistakes.
“That was an error,” she admitted, warning entrepreneurs not to abandon businesses that are still working.
Refusing to give up, she opened a grocery shop in Wandegeya, selling sugar, salt, soap, margarine and other household essentials. She placed small items like sweets at the payment counter and later discovered that those “small small things” were bringing in significant profit.
“You can see the profits which can come from small things,” she told the audience.
Her breakthrough into furniture came unexpectedly when businessman James Musinguzi approached her with an offer to manage a furniture shop. Although the offer included two million shillings — a large sum at the time — she hesitated for two years, unsure whether furniture could sell as fast as bread or groceries.
In 1991, she finally accepted the challenge, rebranded her company and launched Nina Interiors Limited.
Starting operations at Uganda House on Nkrumah Road with only a small team, including her daughters during school holidays, Karugaba handled almost every role herself. She was the cashier, cleaner, accountant and manager all at once.
“I was my own cashier, my own accountant, my own cleaner, my own driver,” she said.
Along the way, she faced serious management challenges. She once hired an underqualified accountant who miscalculated the company’s value, forcing her to rethink her recruitment strategy. She also nearly signed a risky bank loan agreement without reading the fine print — until her daughter stopped her.
“Did you read the small letters?” her daughter had asked, a moment Karugaba says saved her from possible disaster.
At the Enterprise Uganda event, she warned entrepreneurs to always read loan agreements carefully and to comply with tax obligations.
“Please learn to pay taxes. It will save you. You relax when you are compliant,” she advised.
Over the years, she strengthened her company by recruiting qualified professionals and forming a formal board to oversee strategy, compliance and risk management. Her daughters took up key roles in administration, finance and human resources, helping to transform the once small family operation into a structured enterprise.
Today, Nina Interiors stands as a respected name in Kampala’s furniture market, a powerful symbol of resilience and growth.
Her testimony left many inspired, proving that major business empires can rise from the humblest beginnings — even from a simple kitchen where buns were once baked just to survive. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
