His story reads more like fiction as the multi-millionaire actually started out as a hawker in the streets of Nairobi where dodging county council enforcement officers was the order of the day.  

When he was in Form Two, Juma dropped out of school due to lack of school fees. He was forced into hawking second-hand clothes in Nairobi.

“You wouldn’t know what hardships are until you’ve lived the life of a hawker. But I thank God because that job gave me a ‘street degree’, which is much more valuable than any formal education I’ve ever received,” he once explained during an interview.

He also revealed that despite the hardships, he was always thinking of ways of improving his life. One desire that burned in his heart was to own and run his own company. 

Then he got an idea of starting an events company, which he registered under the name ‘Parrot Group’.

After years of grinding in the industry, Parrot won a contract to handle Orange Telkom’s branding during the promotion of the low-end ‘Kadunda’ mobile phone and the rest, as they say, is history.

Parrot Group has so far worked with several companies including M-Kopa, Telkom Kenya, Lenovo and CMC Motors among others. His company has an annual turnover of Ksh70 million with assets worth over Ksh40 million.