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Elevator Pitch: Power Sourced
Illustration by Drue Wagner
Illustration by Drue Wagner
Nikki Okrah (MBA 2021), CEO and Founder
Concept: A snack-food company in Okrah’s native Ghana that is building farming supply chain infrastructure for other consumer packaged goods companies to tap into, boosting the income of local farmers.
Mission: Chaku’s sourcing model helps Ghanian farmers mitigate crop loss, which can run as high as 40 percent because of processing and exporting challenges. Okrah lived close to those farmers in Kumasi, an agrarian region of Ghana. “The farming families where I live are quite literally tied to the land,” she explains. Economic advancement can’t require relocation.
“Making the farmers more efficient and building up the economy that way—that’s what keeps me going.”
Milestones: A grand-prize winner in the 2021 Harvard President’s Innovation Challenge, Chaku launched its first product, Nikki’s Plantain Crisps, in South Africa in 2020. For its US market approach, the company is initially employing a higher-margin, B2B model. Early corporate customer Facebook is now stocking its cafeterias with Chaku’s chips.
Courtesy Nikki Okrah
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