Kamal Budhabhatti, the founder and CEO of Little and Craft Silicon does a lot of things based on his gut.

“When you are really confused on whether to go with the head or the heart, always go with the heart.” This technique has worked really well for him. He explains that compared to doing a lot of planning in your head including mathematical equations, doing what you feel actually works better. “Keep things as simple as possible,” he says.

Craft Silicon was founded in Kenya but currently they provide financial software solutions in 45 different countries both in Africa and in Asia. They have a large setup in Kenya which is the head office, with other setups in India and Indonesia.

In terms of processing, they are the second transaction processor in the country at Kshs 600 billion per year, only behind Safaricom who are at Kshs 1 trillion.

Despite of all this success you might not know them because they are always at the back. Transactions done on mobile and banking apps are done by them, but you will never know they exist.

Kamal Budhabhatti is also the founder and CEO of Little, a ride hailing service that he also got into through his gut feeling. He believes there’s opportunity in owning the customer relationship, which today he doesn’t have by virtue of being a player in the background. Through Little’s 1 Million customers, he is now able to think up more services he can offer them and capitalise on the value of each customer.

What has worked for you? Head or heart?

Kamal Budhabhatti was a guest at Founders drink up in January 2020. If you are interested in joining our growth accountability programmes, please email us on dream@wearefounders.co.ke