Meet the man behind the popular Tusker TV advert

• He is a software engineer
• He produces music for artists for free

The founder of Flag 42, is the brain behind the latest Tusker advert that brings together sounds from different Kenyan communities. Kaki Gondi, a software engineer, produces music for artists at no fee, only that you have to keep time after booking well in advance.

Gondi left high paying jobs out of the country as a software engineer to come and set up an audio production studio back here at home.

"I studied software engineering up to Masters Level. I used to be a DJ but I wanted to challenge myself more and that was way back in 2005. So I got into music and did my first production using basic software," he says of how his love for sound and music started.

He says that during the day, he would study programming and do music at night before he moved to the UK to pursue his interest in music production.

He narrates, "When I moved to from the US to the UK my vision changed from music to adverts which I have commercialized this far. I however did my very first adverts for free."

For a man who had worked at IBM in the US, the Electoral Reform Services as a database admin in the UK and at CFC as a programmer, the going was not going to be easy but he had started and there was no way he was going to stop. He says that he was still producing music despite being employed.

Gondi then made a decision that would rub his parents the wrong way; he wanted to come back to Kenya. But his parents never approved of this move after what they had invested in him educationally.

"My parents wanted me to stay in the US because they thought life was better there but my love for Kenya would not allow me. I wanted to be home and work from here" he states.

On coming back to Kenya, he started work from home before moving into a small office. He started music production in the bedroom which was turned into a studio. It was in starting this that he finally resorted to doing majorly adverts for commercial purposes.

Then his company Flag 42 was born.

"I feel part of anything that explains Kenya. I looked for something that would identify Kenya and I thought of 42 and this is how even this company was born. You can see I have merged the flag and 42. I even have a tattoo of the logo. I wanted something that would take software and music; and bring the sense of one Kenya."

From a small company that owned only a soundcard, an earphone and a laptop given to him as a present on his graduation day, the initial studio cost Gondi Sh30,000 to set up. It was inside a bedroom in his parents' house in Lavington.

He says, "I would hold the curtain and an artist sings as we record. Then I talked to my parents to allow me to use the store but this came with a disclaimer – I had to pay the charges for electricity."

The essence of paying power charges, he says, was just to make him more responsible and rely less on freebies. And he did his first major advertisement, a music advert for Crown Paints.

Even then, Gondi never stopped producing music free of charge as a way of giving back to the society, a feat that would earn him a major deal.

"In 2010, while talking to my younger sister, I told her how it would be nice to go around Kenya and just pick sounds. Wendy Gondi looked at me like I was crazy. But she has become my greatest supporter and critic," he recounts.

This is how the idea was born and when he was called for an interview about the advert almost six years later, he could not believe that it was even coming into reality. Over 100 people were interviewed but Gondi beat them all to the contract..

He says, "I think they discovered that I give studio time for free which means that I was involved in developing the society and that I do not discriminate on anybody regardless of their background. This made them believe in my idea for the sounds from around Kenya all mashed up into one advert."

Gondi and his team of 50 would then embark on a journey around Kenya to collect not just musical sounds but also cultural and natural sounds.

"It was not just about music but culture and within 24 days we had gone through Kenya and recorded authentic natural sounds from different communities before we started putting them together," says Gondi.

With a spacious office in Kilimani, Nairobi, Gondi still produces adverts and now does both audio and video. Despite this he still produces music free of charge in his two studios only that the artist has to book in advance and make keep time.

With audio production well underway, Gondi says that he is still in the business of software as his own man. In fact he recently launched a software, Mziki Trak, that logs in all music played in Kenyan media and stores the data which can be used for data royalty claims.

And he has learnt lessons too.

"Patience and humility are great virtues. Humility as you know is not a common factor. And I have also learnt that respect is key when dealing with people no matter how small they may be. My father taught that I could not drive his car. I had to work hard and buy mine or else I would use matatu forever. That takes great patience."

Gondi urges young people to get out of this idea that they can make riches quickly without working for it arguing that success is a step by step process that takes time.

"God will never bless you with something you cannot handle. So be patient and work hard!" is his parting shot.