An Amazing Journey of Cytonn Investments

We have always been told that it takes a committed group of positively minded people to turn an idea into reality. Most of us tend to have a lot of ideas but we fail when it comes to implementing them. An idea is like a dream. A person who dreams then wakes up and chases after the dream, stops being called a dreamer and becomes an idealist.

Cytonn Investments is among the youngest in the investment markets in the country but for the short period it has existed, it has grown to the extent of being ahead of many other companies in the same category that have been in existence for the past ten years.

Cytonn which offers alternative investment solutions in real estate, structured solutions, private equity and advisory was formed by a team of four who had worked together at one of Kenya’s leading financial investment firm, British American Investment Company (Britam).

Mr. Edwin Dande, who used to be the British-American Asset Managers (BAAM)together with Elizabeth Nkuku (portfolio manager), Shiv Arora (investment analyst) and Patricia Wanjama (head of legal) decided to call a quit to their former company where they were employees and founded Cytonn Investments. Despite a lot of controversies that came along after the team left Britam Asset Management, they did not hesitate to make their dream a reality.

The move to team up and come up with their own investment company came about after they helped their former company growing profitability by over 10 times, increasing assets by over three times and moving the previous firm from number six to number one (in the East-African region) by revenues. This is when the team thought of creating an independent firm that will focused solely on serving the interests of clients and investors.

Their main aim was and still is to primarily focus on offering alternative investment solutions to global institutional investors, individual high net-worth investors, local institutional investors and diaspora investors interested in the East-African region.

“We came from our previous platform, we thought that it was better to build and run something independent where we could solely focus on the interest of investors… when we left we had a couple of rocky months dealing with legal issues which is normal. So we are working on this and we will certainly,” Edwin Dande, CEO at Cytonn once said in a statement.

The company that started with four individuals has been able to grow to over 20 more individuals and has also been able to attract investors both to their funds and also selling shares of the company around 10 per cent thus valuing the company at around 1.1 billion Kenya shillings.

Cytonn Investments has been able to maintain a clientele base especially foreign ones and this has been made possible since they have an international work experience making them have contacts from abroad.

The firm is currently building a leading real estate and private equity investment in the East African region to ensure it continues to grow.

Cytonn Investments has grown, it is growing and it will continue to grow.