Founder Fridays: Amazuka

For Victor Kenmoe, entrepreneurship started with a difficult lesson at home. He and his brother, Gloire Kenmoe, grew up watching their father build several businesses, only to see them collapse because of logistics and management problems.

The experience came close to pushing the family into poverty and eventually influenced the brothers to start Amazuka, using their older sister’s remaining savings to launch the business.

What began as an attempt to address problems they had witnessed firsthand has grown into a technology and commerce company built around e-commerce, food delivery, logistics and consumer data.

From a Family Business Lesson to Amazuka

Victor says watching his father run different businesses gave him an early understanding of how companies operate. From managing accounts and supplies to handling employees and setting prices, those experiences exposed him and his brother to business from a young age.

When they launched Amazuka, their initial ambition was straightforward: enable anyone to order anything and have it delivered to their doorstep within 30 minutes.

The company started with e-commerce before expanding into meal delivery. That expansion also gave Amazuka access to more information about what customers buy and how they behave.

“The more problems we solve for our clients, the more they trust us, and the more we grow together,” he said.

Amazuka also decided to control its own delivery network because maintaining the customer experience required control over the entire process, from the ordering platform to the final delivery.

Customers may only see the delivery person at the end of the process, but Victor says those couriers have to be trained and follow a specific code to maintain the expected level of service.

Launching e-commerce and food delivery at the same time was a risk, but Victor says the approach increased order volumes and doubled growth. Maintaining delivery within the promised timeframes remains one of the company’s operational challenges.

Building the Technology and Using Consumer Data

In the early days, Amazuka did not have enough resources to hire a web developer or build a full technical team. Victor responded by teaching himself programming languages and machine learning and using those skills to build the company’s initial technology infrastructure.

As the business grew, Amazuka brought in technical teams to support the platform.

Technology now plays a central role in how the company understands its customers and manages logistics. Amazuka tracks activity across its e-commerce and food delivery platforms, while also collecting information on delivery routes and transit times.

Victor says one of the biggest surprises has been how predictable customer behaviour becomes when a company has enough data about consumption habits.

Victor says Amazuka uses the data it collects to understand what customers do and what they may need next. The company tracks their movements on its platforms, maps delivery areas and records transit times to improve its logistics.

He says AI can help Amazuka make better use of this consumption data and improve the service it offers customers.

“Consumers don’t care about the company initially. They care when you offer them what they need,” Victor says. For him, that makes trust critical. “One small mistake can make you lose that trust.”

Building With His Brother and Looking Beyond Cameroon

Victor and Gloire operate Amazuka as co-CEOs, with both holding equal authority. He says the arrangement has worked because they are able to agree on decisions and have complementary perspectives.

For Victor, having two people at the top of the company has proved useful as Amazuka continues to grow.

Victor’s five-year goal is to build a large body of consumer data. He believes that understanding consumption patterns at this level could help Amazuka better anticipate demand and improve how goods and services reach customers.

Expansion beyond Cameroon will depend on several factors, including market size, actual consumer needs and Amazuka’s ability to build the infrastructure required to operate efficiently.

Rather than expanding simply for the sake of entering new markets, Victor says the company looks at whether it can solve genuine problems and build systems that can support the business at scale.

Expansion and the Next Phase

Amazuka’s longer-term ambition extends beyond e-commerce and food delivery. Victor sees an opportunity to build deeper infrastructure around how African consumers buy products and how those products move through markets.

Consumer data, logistics and technology will remain central to that ambition. By understanding what people buy, when they buy it and how long deliveries take, Amazuka can continue refining its operations and services.

For Victor, this is also where the company’s early investment in technology becomes important. The infrastructure being built today is intended to support a business that can understand demand and respond to it more efficiently as it enters new markets.

Victor’s Advice to Young Founders

Victor’s advice to young entrepreneurs starts with understanding whether an idea solves a genuine problem.

He recommends conducting market research before investing heavily in a business and testing the idea on a smaller scale before attempting to build a large operation.

His approach is simple: start small, learn from the market and keep the larger ambition in sight.

“Start small but with a big vision,” he said.