Startup Kenya

In one of my first classes at the University towards my law degree I encountered what must be one of the most eccentric lecturers in Kenya. Besides a deep seated hatred for apples (for the crunchy sound made when eaten) he was a multiple accident victim whose injuries had left him with a condition where he could lapse into complete catatonia. Not only did this affect his duties at the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda where he was a prosecutor but it could also make him re-boot halfway into his lecture. On re-boot (despite lecturing for hours already) he would begin "good morning class today we are going to look at..." In spite of this, I still found myself immensely enjoying his class and the subject he taught - criminal law. There were many reasons why I liked criminal law but perhaps the number one reason was because of some of the fantastic stories we discussed. We would study intentions and acts of murder, manslaughter, arson, cannibalism, conspiracy, buggery (do...

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 ...

It seems even giants can be rattled. Since Bharti/Zain welcomed the birth of Kenya's second republic with the lowest call charges across mobile networks, their counterparts on Waiyaki way (Safaricom) have been as busy as bees. I can now exclusively reveal through my inside sources the happenings at Safaricom these past three weeks, some of which are utterly shocking. 1. Shutting down the Facebook Page Even before Zain introduced their game changer tariffs, the official facebook page for Safaricom http://www.facebook.com/#!/SafaricomLtd?ref=ts was peppered with negative comments from users. After Zain's tariff launch however, it seems people went full time on #chukifm on the Safaricom facebook page, complaining on every single comment from Safaricom. Sample some posts from users below: "...as long as u guys stil continu stealin our credit usin ur unlimited internet shit,u suck in evrthn u do.actualy,u stink!"  "MASAA YA KUIBA...i want my 21 mb of free da...

Since my post on why I won't be ditching my Safaricom line any time soon , I've been getting a lot of love from Big Green affiliates broadcasting the post. What these fellows should have been doing is sorting out the many issues with their products and services. Since everybody likes lists, I'm going to put up another one today - on the 10 things that I really hate about Safaricom. 1. Masaa ya Kubamba tariff. Surprised? Don't be. This is the most annoyingly complex product Safaricom have ever devised in their evil labs. First of all, how to determine what you'll be charged based the card you use to top up might make sense to the financial division, but it is absolute torture to the consumer. To make matters worse it isn't clear what happens if you top up 100, use 50 then top up 30 with M-PESA, sambaza 80, redeem bonga points, okoa jahazi, receive 100 through sambaza: what tariff are you on? 2. Okoa Jahazi They should call this product Tuna shylock, at 10% ...

For those who've been reading my blog you know that I have a love/hate relationship with Safaricom. One week I will lavish praise on them, the next I'll be trashing them. With such swinging passions, it is easy to find inspiration to write on them, and resultantly I do it often. This week I'm at it again, giving my 3 reasons why I'll be sticking with Big Green and ignore the Vuka to Zhairtel wave currently going on. 1. Data Services. Safaricom's recent press release responding to its competitors drop in voice call charges captured one thing right on the mark. They are no longer just a mobile telephone company, they are a total (communications) solutions company. Just like DoCoMo of Japan, Safaricom early on realized that voice services were not enough and their future lay in data/internet services on mobile phone handsets. They've gone ahead and backed this conviction with some serious investment in 3G, fibre, WiMax, and now 4G. Safaricom has not stopped a...

It’s time to take Safaricom down. It’s time to chop up that green giant into smaller pieces. In just 10 short years, Safaricom Ltd has grown from a small unprofitable subsidiary of Telkom Kenya catering to the uber rich into Kenya’s largest telecommunications company, ISP, and bank. This behemoth, with its size, information control, and growing database of personal information of its clients threatens our economic stabilty, individual liberties and our sovereignty and  cannot afford to left this unchecked. At the end of this speech, fellow toastmasters you will join my petition to have Safaricom Ltd, be broken up into smaller, more regulated companies. 1.       The first and most obvious reason why we need to break up Safaricom is because of its sheer size. In every category, Safaricom is a lumbering giant. It has over millions of Kenyans using its services and makes billions for its shareholders and government.  While these numbers may bri...

A detour from the constitutional debate. This week there has been a very public back and forth between Safaricom on one side and CCK, Yu, Zain, and Telkom on the other. The brouhaha is over a set of regulations published by CCK, which you can view here and here . Now, I'll be honest I tried reading the regulations but I got bored, but if I'm to believe the arguments of CCK and Safaricom then I'm going to give this one to Safaricom. Why lie Safaricom deserves to be market leader. Not only have they cranked out great product after great product, they've done this while keeping their business very profitable using the "just good enough formula". In case you have not read The Innovator's Solution , by Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor, then I'll explain. The just-good-enough formula means that a product need not be perfect to be marketable, it must only meet the minimum threshold of the job the consumer is trying to achieve. The clearest example ...

You'd be very surprised if you walked into a management meeting at Safaricom. The meeting's agenda on how management is devoting or planning to devote considerable resources in customer satisfaction would bewilder you. My overworked flys on the wall tell me that this is currenlty Safaricom's primary focus, customer satisfaction. Did I hear a gasp, or was that you masking "bull****" under your cough? Here in the real world, we still are trying to figure out how customer satisfaction by Safaricom is measured: is it getting a dial signal on the customer care number 100? Or perhaps it's finishing a conversation without spending thirty seconds saying "Hallo....hallo...can you hear me...hallo"? Maybe its spending less than 30 minutes queuing at a customer care centre? While we ponder on this, I'm afraid I have to bash Great Green once more on another major goof. This time the culprit is M-PESA agent application on service so bad it almost equals their ...

I'm going to stop reading newspapers. If you live in Kenya, and see the daily headlines you'll understand why. It seems like day after day I am assaulted with ever more dire headlines. Either the editors of these newspapers have suddenly turned into sadists intent on breaking this country's spirit, or our spirit is already broken and we are living in a very sick, sick Kenya. Over the past weeks I have read about greedy retailers who crammed their tiny stores with goods but couldn't provide decent exits or fire prevention equipment; policemen who demanded bribes to allow highly dangerous petrol looting, arsonists-looters who decided 'if I can't have it, no one can', ministers of government who dished out food reserves and threatened the lives of millions through starvation, custodians of investors funds who used these funds as their personal piggy banks, examiners who put in doubt the academic qualifications of a generation of students, and the list goes on a...

What are the three most common things you expect to find in a Kenyan's wallet? National ID ATM Card Cash (if it's between 28th of previous month and 5th of new month). I think that we can now add a fourth... a Zain sim card. The pink card from the Mombasa road fellows is now a must-have for any sophisticated mobile phone user (who probably are in the millions), even if it spendgs most time in the wallet. For too long we have watched the rapid release of products from Celtel/Zain with the frustration of a teacher having to severally repeat a point to a dunderhead student. Uhuru tariff, Pamoja tariff, 6pm-6am 3 bob tariff, Unlimited talk time tariff, have all been excellent products in their own right, but not good enough to get a mass exodus from green to pink. However things may now be changing with the new Vuka tariff . Vuka represents a brutal price war tactic on the part of Zain, intended to convert greens to pinks by making Zain the cheapest network to use, regardless of w...

Ah, the uninhibited joy of wishful thinking. After Safaricom introduced Voice SMS - a product that I had dreamed of since I first used a mobile phone - I started thinking "hey, perhaps I can voice some of my other fanciful mobile phone product ideas, and someone may just take notice"? Well, here goes ... the following list are some of the next products I'd like to see from the trio of Safaricom, Zain and Orange. An SMS autoresponder. Everytime you get an SMS you can optionally send back a response like "Thanks for your SMS I'll get back to you", or "Sorry I'm not able to respond to your SMS right now but I'll do so as soon as I'm able" It would be quite useful, especially when your phone is off/out of reach/on divert. The ability to convert unused airtime back to cash (although I know this makes absolutely no financial sense to these companies, it would be really cool!) Free voicemail depositing. Mobile Number Porting, just let me use ...

A reliable fly on the wall says that this venture from Kencell/Celtel/Whatever is drawing its last breath. I guess they had it coming considering the business model they took.  One of my favourite business books "An Innovator's Solution" says that the key to successful products is to find out what job consumers are trying to get done, and develop a product that gets that job done. Hate them or love them, thats what M-PESA did, and what Sokotele failed to do, and now they will be punished for it. I believe Sokoteles biggest mistake was tying-in the service to K-Rep (although I hear that this was because the service was actually a K-Rep idea!), and making the service simply about money transfer instead of the more job-I'm-trying-to-get-done 'liquid money storage' service that M-PESA is. Oh well, lets see if a rejuvenated Telkom can create some waves with their own moribund money-transfer service (any body know what its called) under an Orange brand.

As one of the new owners of Safaricom (granted that I get at least some 100 shares after the massively oversubscribed IPO) I take a keen interest in its (Safaricom's) financial future. I'll try not to repeat what has probably been written, blogged, sms'ed, posted etc. a thousand times over in other fora and instead give my own two sumunis on what I believe lies in wait for this behemoth. I'll warn you first that most of what I write here is speculative and should not form the basis of your investment decisions. In my last post I mentioned I would talk about how Safaricom is transforming itself into a financial company. It seems that now everyone else is sitting up and taking notice. For anyone who followed the release of S'coms spectacular financial results released a couple of days ago you would have noted how their trumpted their M-PESA product yet at the same time tried to assuage banks that they were not in competition with them. Give me a break! Now that I wil...