Startup Kenya

This morning I woke to a full page advert in the dailies announcing that Safaricom had launched a new data tariff for KSh.2 per minute billed per second. Instantly several questions popped up in my mind, many of which were gratifyingly answered by @kachwanya's and @mkaigwa's excellent posts. The concept of per minute browsing readily intrigued me because of my rural cyber cafe exploits as well as my general interest in Safaricom's data products . Before I could devise a strategy on how these new tariffs would impact my internet hungry businesses, I decided to give it a test trial. I figured a 10 minute session (presumably worth KSh. 20) should be sufficient to answer questions about speed and reliability. Below are the results of my test trial, which I should warn are not scientific and it would do well for you to carry out your own trials. 1. Deciding that a 3G modem would get the job done best, I first made sure that my bandwidth balance was expired. This was done ...

Tom ran the numbers again, furiously punching the enter key on his keyboard as if to determine a different outcome. There was a slight decrease of Ks. 22,000, hardly enough to make a dent on the Ks. 1.8m fiscal hole he was staring at. He had been at this for six hours now and no matter which way he tried to slash costs, it was painfully obvious that unless he made some drastic changes, his business was headed for bankruptcy. Leaning back in his leather chair his eyes glanced up from the monitor to look out through his glass partion to his personal assistant Maryanne. She had been very loyal to him these difficult past six months, but even from his desk he could see that she was spending her time on youtube, probaly looking at baby videos since she was a new mother. The volumnious work load that had inspired her recruitment and six others seemed to dry up the minute they set up their desks. Tom had figured it was just a bad month and things would change, but half a year later, the s...