In an interview, Ishyo Foods’ founder, Sharon Akanyana, credited this remarkable growth to data and digitalisation.
Akanyana founded her company in 2017 as a way to produce affordable yoghurt, especially for young children like her own. Although the original plan was to focus on yoghurt, challenges with equipment delayed the production for months.
“When we faced issues with equipment, we pivoted and said, ‘Let’s make jam,’” she recalls, describing a move that kept her idea alive. The first batches were supplied to a neighbourhood supermarket in Kibagabaga, a neighbourhood in Kigali, as the supermarket had agreed to give the product a chance.
One shelf led to several more; they acquired their S Mark from Rwanda Standards Board (RSB) and got their equipment from customs, and they began making yoghurts. Those small wins built the momentum that prompted a shift in focus towards scaling production and improving standards.
The team upgraded to a modest facility, documented its procedures on paper, and treated quality as proof of progress. Once shelf space was secured, the focus shifted from whether the product could sell to how the start-up could evolve into a scale-up.
That question revealed a major information gap. “We realised there was a lot of data we needed. We asked ourselves: how will we know we’re making losses? How will we know we’re making profits? How will we know how many customers we have? How will we know which customers we haven’t served in the past week?” Akanyana explains.
“Milk might be ready while the cups were missing, or a store could drop from four deliveries a month to two without anyone noticing. The solution was a shift from manual processes to digital systems, designed around the everyday decisions that kept the business running.”
Ishyo Foods later became one of the Rwandan micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) selected to be part of a cohort of businesses supported through the Rwanda Economy Digitalisation (RED) Programme. The RED Programme is implemented by a partnership between the Mastercard Foundation, the Ministry of ICT and Innovation and Cenfri.
The programme provided Ishyo Foods with the support to move from manual processes to digital transformation. “We used to use Excel sheets for our sales, but it was a semi-digital system. There is not much you can do with it”, she says. With the right support, finance moved first, adopting QuickBooks. QuickBooks stabilises invoicing, and sales visibility followed.
That shift helped form a simple customer-relationship rhythm across about 300 supermarkets. Operations and inventory then began a migration to Odoo, an online software application that will be used company-wide for the management of business processes.
“We are starting to learn how to use Odoo,” she explains, “because an integrated view of stock, procurement, and production planning helps reconcile minimum order quantities with supplier lead times before shortages appear.”
After digitalising their processes, the company started recording service improvement. The company treated each signal as data, which led to recipe refinements, re-sequenced routes, and tighter contact schedules that protected relationships while volumes rose.
“Data is our oxygen,” she says. “When you have no data, then there is no growth. How will you know you’re making losses? How will you know you’re making profits? How will you know how many customers you have? So data is essential. Data is everything.”
Results followed the discipline. “In 2023 and 2024, we grew our sales by more than 100%,” she reports. Production climbed from using 200 litres of milk per week to 1,000 litres.”
The team grew with the workload. “Full-time about 28, and part-time about 27,” she notes in response to a question about the size of the team. The customer base widened in step. “We have 300 customers now.” The narrative lines up with the numbers. Better delivery cadence, fewer stockouts, and earlier procurement tend to raise throughput and reduce waste when demand is present.
Context matters, and she is explicit about Rwanda’s ecosystem. “Rwanda is the best place for businesses, startups,” Akanyana says, pointing to advisory networks, grants, affordable loans, and selected tax relief on imports.
Akanyana is equally direct about the internal responsibility that sustains growth. “When you have no data, then there is no growth,” she says. “Tools require consistent input. Teams need training and time. Suppliers can miss deadlines. Cash cycles can tighten even when dashboards are accurate. These are constraints to manage with routine, review, and prompt action.”
The method is simple to state and demanding to practice. Define the facts that matter for tomorrow’s deliveries, capture them without fail today, and make decisions while they can still change outcomes.
Eight years after a kitchen trial became a company, the results are visible on shelves across Kigali. The engine behind those shelves is a founder who chose to turn listening into a system and records into dashboards that guide the next move.
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