Immaculate Nantongo and her fabulous homes

Immaculate Nantongo is an entrepreneur behind a number of trending businesses. She is the brain behind the `Fabulous Home Festival’ and ‘My Fabulous Home’ community on Facebook. She also owns the Flawless Skin Care products brand and co-owns Pizza King; a fast foods place with pizza as its flagship serving.

Kampala, Uganda | AGNES E NANTABA |“I have actually sold so many other things and when I see an opportunity I take it on,” she says, “It helps me work on my dreams as opposed to working for others and pushing ahead their dreams.”

Flawless Skin Care was her first business project after graduating from Makerere University in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in Development Economics.

Today, she is living her passion of inspiring people to have fabulous homes with beautiful spaces and trending themes. Nantongo uses the Facebook platform to involve an audience of over 9000 members under ‘My Fabulous Home’ page that she created in 2017. The group focuses on sharing ideas on construction, property acquisition, home improvement, and exterior and Interior designs.

“A fabulous Home doesn’t need to be expensive, you just have to know how to get the best out of your budget,” says Nantongo, “We have a wide variety of professionals to offer advice on anything related to real estate.”

‘My Fabulous Home’ started when Nantongo decided to construct her home and realised she needed tonnes of advice but there was no platform. So she started sharing her ordeals on social media; especially Facebook. She initially did it in private posts. Then she realised many people were facing the same ordeals and opened a space where they could share their building journey.

Nantongo says, “The group initially had females because they are mostly cheated by professionals with a belief that they are ignorant about the market rates”.

Through the platform, Nantongo was connected to engineers and other construction service providers. It became an opportunity for many to learn from experts who feature on the platform every Friday. On the same group, other people have posted about being energised to start their building projects, borrowing from the experience of other group members.

A year into ‘My Fabulous Home’ and with new ideas, she demolished parts of the house she built to incorporate new trends like the double door entrance and roof.

“It is now a completely different project from what I had in mind initially,” she says.

The `Fabulous Home Festival’ is a physical platform that complements ‘My Fabulous Home’ page. It debuted in December 2018 and enables home interior and exterior décor to be showcased. Nantongo also started the ‘My fabulous Investment Club’ which has 170 members who save money for a year and buy land and other investments.

“We plan to have a supermarket, communal refreshment area, schools, hospitals and other facilities,” says Nantongo.

Nantongo attributes her entrepreneurial spirit to her parents; Samuel Ssentongo and Babirye Namutebi (RIP). She is the third born of four children. She says even without high formal education, her late mother was a successful entrepreneur.

She went to Kamuli Primary School for primary education before joining St Kalemba for ordinary level and Kibibi SS for advanced level and finally Makerere University.