Startup Kenya

Well well well... once again here I am, the self-appointed critic and fan of the m-commerce industry in our beautiful Kenya. My fly on the wall has been working very hard and I have gotten further confirmation about the burial of Sokotole, but wait there's a surprise.... Yes, sokotele is as dead as a dodo but it is to be resurrected with a new name, new features who aims to become a formidable competitor to M-pesa. Very keen to see what those Zain Kuwaiti oil dollars are going to crank out.  Watch this space for details.

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.