'I survived paralysis, burning bus, miscarriages to build a thriving gym business'
Vinita Otieno, during an interview in Nairobi.
By James Rogoi
What you need to know:
- Vinita has overcome immense tragedy, starting with her premature birth.
- She has also dealt with the repetitive heartbreak of several miscarriages.
One morning in April 2015, Vinita Otieno woke up, with a toddling daughter on each side of her as was their routine. She had a blue sweater on, she vividly remembers.
“I couldn’t get up. I was struggling to breathe,” Vinita recounts of one of the monumental periods of her life. She told her children to call Auntie Judy, their help, who rushed in with her inhaler - she is asthmatic.
It was more than an asthmatic attack.
“They poked my legs and I couldn’t feel them," Vinita says.
For the next three months, she went on a difficult recovery journey which came to a miraculous end one sunny afternoon at a hospital in Nairobi's South B.
She had earlier concluded that she could survive in a wheelchair. She had accepted this fate only if she could have a pink wheelchair.
Vinita says she heard a voice telling her to stand up and walk. She obliged. She started by wiggling her toes, she then sat up before putting her legs one after the other on the floor.
Next, she put her hands behind her and held on to her bed. An older lady she shared the hospital room with was looking on in utter shock. She then put one foot in front of the other and started to walk.
The doctors never did find out what was wrong with her but Vinita accredits her miraculous recovery to God, just like her survival in childbirth.
Vinita was born prematurely at 23 weeks. From the very start, she had to fight for her life and this is a trait that has manifested throughout her life, sometimes coming across, she admits, as too aggressive.
Her father still jokes that he could hold her in one hand, ‘like a small rat.’ But no one in her family thought her any special, she was thrown in amongst the rest and had to hold her own for everything.
“I started running when I was in Class 2 or 3,” she recalls.
She did not know fitness would lead to a career that early, but the vision cleared up for her at the University in Saskatchewan, Canada where she was a student of International Studies and Law, a course her father had insisted she pursue.
She enjoyed the exploits of international relations and the letter of the law but as she puts it, in her fitness quest she had ‘found what she loved’ and she was letting it lead her where she wanted to go.
In wintry Canada, Vinita fell in love with the sport in her quest to drop the ‘freshman ten’ weight accustomed to newcomers in college, a testament to more binge eating and freedom from their parents. She was a stalwart at the gym which one of the coaches there recognised.
“He said because I was very consistent in how I train, I would like to try something new. I said sure.”
That’s how she was introduced to bodybuilding. She enjoyed the discipline of it, she says, and even placed second in a competition back North before her path to a career as a glistening-toned model was cut short when she came back home in 2004.
Nonchalantly, Vinita says, “I came to visit and met my husband.” In the gym at Parklands Sports Club, while on a cross-trainer routine, she saw him across the room and at the same moment saw a vision of their children.
They met and said hello at the water point but it was not until April 21, 2005 (she is precise with dates) that he took her on their first date and as they say, the rest has been a love story for the ages.
By the end of 2004, Vinita was personal trainer to a troupe of 10 who like the Canadian coach earlier had seen her consistency and work ethic and relished the opportunity to work out with her.
USN, a sports supplement company recruited her as their ambassador and as chance, for anyone else but divine purpose for Vinita, would have it an activation for the supplement company found her at Nairobi's The Junction Mall where a group of British investors was prospecting for space in the gymnasium business.
They talked to Ms Otieno and finalised that she would come into the space as one of the personal trainers.
“Take my email,” Ms Otieno, enthused by the prospect, said. She adds, “I checked my e-mail in the afternoon and they say they’d like to consider me for Assistant Manager.”
By evening, there was another email, asking her to take up the Manager’s corner office in the new gym at The Junction. In 2018, a year later, she was asked to be a co-founder.
Vinita says she called the founder in England about the colours for their future outfit.
“He said, ‘you pick the colours, you meet the contractors!’”
Ms Otieno was surprised but took up the mantle on the ground to create a business model that was unique in Kenya at the time. Gym was associated with being a niche market something Ms Otieno strived to combat.
And thus, Smart Gyms was born charging a more than competitive Sh3,500 a month. Gym-goers could train as much as they wanted and had an additional 24 free lessons.
Quickly, the concept of Smart Gyms became a success and The Junction Branch was followed by a location at Diamond Plaza, one at Southfield Mall, Embakasi and The Hub, Karen bringing them to four locations in total.
“I love to watch people transform, not just because they lose weight. When you transform and do something hard, there’s a mind shift,” she says.
In her life, Vinita has overcome immense tragedy, starting with the story of her birth.
At barely four, she fractured her skull on a swing, missing a term of school, was shortly after rescued by her sister from a burning Nyayo Bus next to Valley Arcade, Nairobi and was the victim of a car accident back in Canada (her spine shifted).
She has also dealt with the repetitive heartbreak of several miscarriages in her life. She describes it as a promise cruelly wrenched from an expectant mother.
She attributes her life simply and in the least complexity to God because, “In the course of the human realm, there is no answer.”
At 45, she feels she is just venturing out and is only halfway through her life.
