Mubarak Muyika | |
---|---|
Born | |
Nationality | Kenyan American |
Education | Friends School Kamusinga (High School) |
Occupation(s) | Entrepreneur, programmer, business executive |
Known for | Entrepreneurship |
Mubarak Muyika (born May 31, 1994, Western Province, Kenya), is a Kenyan American business executive, computer programmer and internet entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley. [1] Orphaned at the age of 10, at age 16 Muyika founded Hype Century, a web hosting company which he sold two years later for six figures. [2] He is the founder and CEO of Zagace, a company which runs an app store for businesses to access software for accounting, human resource management, marketing, among other uses. [3] [4] [5]
Forbes listed him as one of Forbes Africa's 30 under 30 both in 2015 and 2017, [6] [7] and he was youngest in Business Insider's list of top young entrepreneurs around the world. [8]
Mubarak Muyika was born in Western Province, Kenya. [1] His father was the district commissioner of Siaya, a senior civil servant, who died when Mubarak was 2, and mother a high school teacher who died when he was 11. [1] Muyika was raised by his mother's sister and her husband in the suburbs of Nairobi. [1]
While a student at Friends School Kamusinga, Muyika won two awards in Kenya's national science fair, the annual Kenya Students Congress on Science and Technology:
In the fair's 48th edition in 2010, he won for a technical whitepaper titled 'Kahunic infra-photo surveyor', which was presented as a computer talk, and was ranked first in that category. Muyika's whitepaper was based on Java, MySQL and C++ dependencies, infra-red and laser rays, and customized ray emitters to identify objects concealed behind concrete and wood, among other uses, by use of reflection and refraction.[ citation needed ]
In the fair's 49th edition the following year, Muyika won for a database he developed to manage the flow of petrol and movement of oil tankers. [1] The project's original name in the fair was 'Techno Fibre System', [9] but it was also referred to as 'Enhanced petrol tracker'. [1] It was presented as a computer exhibit in the ICT category, and although Muyika was recognized as the best student in the category, [1] the project was ranked third nationally in the category. [9]
He graduated from Friend's School Kamusinga in 2011. [10]
His adoptive parents operated a small book publishing and distribution company, Acrodile Publishers. Using online resources and technical experience gained in earlier years, Muyika built a better Website for the company. [11]
In 2011, Muyika founded Hype Century Technologies & Investments Limited, a company focused on website creation and webhosting. The following year, for his work in HypeCentury, he received the Anzisha Prize for young entrepreneurs, from the African Leadership Academy. [12]
Muyika sold HypeCentury to Wemps Telecoms in a six figure deal in May 2013. [3] [10] By the time of the sale Hypecentury had 14 employees and was handling over 700 companies with 1400 domains. [10] [13] HypeCentury has since rebranded and is a fully owned subsidiary of Wemps Telecoms. [13] [14]
Later in 2013, Muyika founded Zagace in Nairobi with proceeds from the sale of HypeCentury, with additional funding from investors. [15] [16] Zagace has since raised a number of angel investments from various investors. [6] [17]
In June 2015, Zagace's parent company was restructured as a Delaware-based parent corporation of the same name, [18] with the company now based in San Jose, California. [15] [19]
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