Meet the Kuruka team

Our small but growing team has extensive experience across the entire enterprise ecosystem, serving major donors, foundations, investors, business support services, and working with hundreds of business owners around the world.

Meet the Kuruka team

Our small but growing team has extensive experience across the entire enterprise ecosystem, serving major donors, foundations, investors, business support services, and working with hundreds of business owners around the world.

Baiju Vaidya, Co-Lead

Baiju Vaidya sits at the nexus of innovation, enterprise development and complex programme delivery. He initially acted as subject matter expert for IMC Worldwide, an international development consultancy. Notably, him and David Irwin led Connect to Grow, a highly successful £3.3m innovation and partnership programme between SGBs in Asia and Africa for UK DFID. More recently, Baiju helped build industries in East Africa for Gatsby Foundation, using systems thinking. Over the past two years, Baiju has deepened his understanding of the psychotherapy, coaching and behaviour change spaces, whilst he consults with organisations on their SGB growth programmes. He was also co-Founder of a high-end fashion label, Amu, which grew from start-up to almost a $100kpa turnover in two years. In all, Baiju has worked with close to 100 ventures as advisor, counsellor, assessor or financier. He is a Certified Manager and Expert in SME Finance.

David Irwin, Co-Lead

David Irwin PhD has vast and global experience across all aspects of economic and enterprise development. He started by launching and one of the UK’s first enterprise agencies growing it to £4m turnover and 95 staff. He then took the position of CEO of the UK government’s Small Business Service managing a £350m spend. Since, David has directly supported many SGBs, carried out assessments of SGBs, designed and led highly successful SGB growth programmes, monitored and evaluated SGB initiatives, and helped build the wider SGB ecosystem, including with policy development. David has also set up, and helped others set-up, enterprise agencies, as well as debt, quasi-equity, and equity funds. David has published a range of journals and factsheets, be it on strategy, financial management or business counselling. He holds the Queens Award for Enterprise Promotion and has worked with Baiju over the past seven years.

Esther Mwihaki - Kuruka Counsellor

Esther Mwihaki is a seasoned business leader with over 20 years’ experience across Africa at senior management level, with SMEs and corporates, as well as in venture capital and private equity. Over the two decades, she has held positions such as Managing Director, consultant CEO, turnaround / fundraising consultant, innovations manager, or branding and strategy consultant, for organisations like BOMU Hospital, Midlands Limited, Eldoville Dairies, Prochem East Africa and Coca Cola. In early 2011, Esther was Partner at Fanisi Capital a $50m Venture Capital Fund investing in East African SMEs. Esther is also a Certified Professional Coach (CPC), and a member of International Coaching Federation (ICF) and has coached several leaders and high achieving individuals to accelerate their careers and transform their lives. Esther has been pushing the envelope with new support techniques such as emotional intelligence development.