Bianca Jemi Wariyava, a 12-year-old, will never forget the day her iPhone 14 was delivered to their house. That was the result of six weeks of arduous work and neither a gift nor a prize she had received.
Bianca, a seventh-grader in Dubai, desired a new phone but her parents were unable to afford one at the time due to financial constraints. She had a fantastic insight in February.
She once shared some bread she had baked with her classmates and packed in her lunchbox by her Filipina mother Gemini Wariyava. “They loved the taste and fluffiness of the bread. They loved it so much they asked me to bring some again the next day,” Bianca told Bianca sold four pieces of bread for Dh10, and on the first day of her venture, she received only two orders, but she kept going.
The next thing she knew, she was selling over 60 pieces a day on average. “It’s not just plain bread I baked. I have flavours like plain soft roll, oreo, ube, cheese, turkey salami with cheese, and chicken franks — which my teachers and schoolmates fell in love with,” said the seventh-grader.
Then one of her pals gave her an idea: Instead of giving them away for free, why not sell them? “And that was when I realised I could buy iPhone 14 with the money I could earn,” she said.
Both of Bianca’s parents are skilled bakers who have experience working in Dubai’s five-star hotels. She really watched them bake in the kitchen as a child. They backed her wholeheartedly when they found out about her plan to market bread. Her mother donated her baking skills, while her Indian father Jemibhai Wariyava gave her the starting capital of Dh100.
After doing her homework in the evenings, she would bake. She would record the orders and only prepare those that were on her list. “Bread is a very fast-moving commodity, and with the secret recipe of my parents, I had fast turnovers,” she said. By the second week of March, she had enough money to buy the iPhone 14 worth nearly Dh3,000.
