Jibu, a start-up that franchises safe drinking water stores in Eastern Africa, stands out in the Franchise Industry by combining business ownership, independence and helping others that truly need it with human necessities. At a previous franchise conference, Latitude’s CEO Jeff Walter met with Jibu’s Co-Founder and CEO, Galen Welsch, during lunch and found himself impressed and inspired with Jibu’s vision.
“What Jibu is doing is unlike anything I’ve seen and that’s why I wanted to give them a membership to show our support and that I believe in what they’re doing. Our LMS handles the unique needs of various business channels and was confident it could help Jibu’s team continue to grow internationally. We are always looking for ways to give back and this was the perfect opportunity to act,” said Jeff Walter.
That’s why Jeff presented Jibu a free LMS for Charity with their LMS program—a gesture that will take them much further than either party expected.
“At the time, we didn’t have enough team members to activate our newly gifted LMS,” admits Kelli Schindelegger, VP of International Franchise Development. “As a start-up, you operate very lean. When I was brought on board eight months ago, I couldn’t wait to activate this partnership with Latitude Learning and streamline our training strategies.”
Latitude’s LMS is the tool Jibu wanted to find. Their team is confident that by using it, it will push them into a major growth company because they’ll be able to handle and train as needed. They plan to utilize their LMS for ongoing training strategies that can be used internationally, which solves a major challenge for them because a lot of their franchise and microfranchise owners span across several countries in Africa.
Jibu’s decentralized business model is different from other franchise business models because it allows their franchisees to open a store and have water filtration equipment in the store so they can procure the water on site, bottle it in the store and then bring that bottled water to their storefront. The great part about this business model is that their franchisees can do every step within their set real estate. From there, consumers can walk into their store and purchase the water at wholesale prices.
The middle man is eliminated from Jibu’s market, along with any markups from distributors, which makes their water extremely reasonable. Bottled water is a luxury in developing countries, their mission is to make water affordable and accessible so that the lower to middle working class can buy clean water in struggling economies. These stores are often located within 2 kilometers of one another so water is always available.
By using Latitude’s LMS, Jibu’s team can stay on track of their business growth plan, which includes expanding into two new countries, every calendar year. While this goal may be ambitious, Jibu believes they can make it a reality now that they have an elite learning management system ready to launch.
To get started with Latitude’s LMS, Kelli and her team are currently within the implementation process, which allows them to learn more about LMS, its capabilities and understand how it’s functionality can strengthen their training to franchisees and microbusiness owners across the world. They hope to have their training strategy with LMS set and running this summer so they can shift focus into growing their business and mission.
“I know this is going to be an amazing partnership,” Kelli says. “It’s really going to be invaluable to us at Jibu. We appreciate it and cannot wait to see the results of using your LMS in a year from now.”
About Jibu
Jibu is a social enterprise pioneering a powerful new model that provides opportunities for entrepreneurs in underserved, emerging market communities to own businesses that ensure access to basic human necessities, with water as an anchor product. Jibu has scaled a network of locally owned, financially independent and self-sustaining franchises that provide safe drinking water to their communities while offering life-changing training and employment. Driven by a belief in the power of eye-to-eye partnership to unleash latent entrepreneurial talent, Jibu is transforming the challenge of addressing basic human needs into an expansive opportunity that allows thousands of entrepreneurs to build lasting solutions, one neighborhood at a time. The company’s ultimate vision is to train, finance, and grow a network of co-invested business owners who will revolutionize the way critical resources participate in emerging markets. For additional information, please visit Jibu.
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