DESTA DANIEL KEBEDE
To get to other places you need to create new ways.
The founder Desta Daniel Kebede was born in Switzerland in 1989. His father is Ethiopian, his mother is Swiss. For his father it was important from the beginning that he and his two years older sister could establish a relation to his home country. He visited his fatherland at the age of three for the first time. Since that time he has been cultivating close contact with his large family circle in Ethiopia.
Desta Daniel Kebede was grown up in Kloten, at the tender age of five years he discovered his great passion, playing hockey. At the age of 15 years he entered the sports high school Rämibühl, where he also did his A-levels. He played in the National League A-cadre at the Kloten Flyers for two years and could participate in the U18 World Cup in Finland with the Swiss national team. Due to his hip surgery, which was only moderately successful, he then had to give up his ice hockey career. In the year 2009 he started his studies at the University St. Gallen, which he completed in the year 2015. He dedicated his degree thesis to the need to go new ways and develop innovative approaches, carrying the title: ”The Integral Enterprise as a Vehicle for Local Economic Development – The Case of the DDKgroup Ltd“.
For the young entrepreneur Desta Daniel Kebede it has always been clear that one day he will make the first step into independency. And that it has something to do with his fatherland Ethiopia, too. For his A-levels paper he already dealt with «Ethiopian coffee – from cultivation to export» and its richness.
After that founding the company DDKgroup Ltd was only the logical consequence. Kebede explains "The coffee business is of paramount importance for Ethiopia. Basically it is the second most important export good for developing countries, however, for Ethiopia the most important one: the coffee export generates 35 percent of the GDP and 85 percent of the population are small farmers. At the same time, however, approximately 60 percent of the raw material prices are based on speculation. We create something new and the manufacturers directly take part in our success.
