Liveblog: “Building a Client Base” — Strive Masiyiwa, Founder and Chairman of Econet Wireless
Strive Masiyiwa of Econet Wireless takes the stage at #SoFI2014 to share his experience building a global, African-based telecommunications firm. Strive is a leading thinker on business and development, and it’s almost impossible to document all of his activities in an introduction.
But we’ll try: he is Chair of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa and sits on the board at the Rockefeller Foundation, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Global Board of Advisors, the Africa Progress Panel, and the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board for Sustainable Energy.
Stay tuned as we share highlights from his speech.
09:44 am
And that’s it for today. Great reactions from the crowd are already appearing at #SoFI2014. Be sure to keep coming back for videos, reflections and throughout the day.
Our next liveblog is scheduled for tomorrow at 10:00 AM UTC, and will feature highlights from our panel discussion “Why are We Needed in the First Place” — moderated by none other than Matthew Bishop of the Economist.
09:39 am
And that’s it for Strive’s keynote. Fascinating to think of the changing world Strive’s company has operated in — and influenced.
09:37 am
“And I want 75% of the people in Africa to have a bank account… on a mobile phone.”
09:37 am
“Strive: Today 75% now have a cell phone.”
09:36 am
“At the time, we put in the application that 70% of Zim had never heard a telephone ring.”
09:36 am
Strive: “Success for us is reaching out to meet people’s needs. We have to sell a service, where people haven’t even realized something is missing.” Describes how Econet fought government monopoly.
09:34 am
Strive: “Because we operate in so many different countries, we have to empower management.”
09:33 am
Lays out concerns among agents: building trust, worries about hacking.
09:33 am
Strive: “We had to build a completely different structure around customer service.”
09:32 am
Strive: You really need buy-in from senior management. Launching a mobile money system means you have to design the systems (especially customer support structures) to support it. Really important for providers, whose primary business is to sell phones and airtime!
09:30 am
Bob: What are the challenges involved in cloning approaches that work in one market and adapting to others?
09:30 am
Big part of the strategy is to be able to lend back into the community with the savings they are seeing in the system. Amount of money has attracted interest from corporate community needing loans!
09:28 am
Many using the system to save for goal-oriented purchases. Money builds in the system and then disappears…
09:28 am
Econet pays out interest on all money held in the system over 30 days…
09:27 am
Strive: “We want our customers to feel they can have the same services that they would at a bank. We held off on formally launching a formal savings product.” Realized that many people were, in effect, saving in the “digital float” of money they had uploaded into the system.
09:25 am
Bob Christen now interviewing Strive: “Could you talk about your experience with savings services — as a service different from sending money.”
09:25 am
“We bought a bank just to ensure our agents always have money.”
09:24 am
“Mobile Money works as a partnership. The selection and recruitment of agents– they need to be trusted in the community.”
09:23 am
Interesting client centric insight: people hate transacting in percentages… Econet got rid of any charges that were below a dollar.
09:22 am
Hired 300 young people to get on combis in pairs 15 times a day and stage public conversations about the new service… Interesting “guerilla marketing” experiment.
09:20 am
Service launch involved working both at the regulator and the individual customer level.
09:19 am
Strive laying out how Econet built its model.
09:13 am
Describes the huge growth of Econet Wireless — “We are growing quicker than M-pesa did…” — Growth is 7% compounded per mouth.
09:11 am
“We realized that our customers faced huge pressures around liquidity.”
09:11 am
Fascinating to think of the implications: for those living on less than USD, the minimum denomination is one dollar.
09:10 am
Eco Cash was launched right when Zimbabwe abandoned it’s own currency and began using international currency to fight inflation.
09:09 am
“We needed a market — which we called our sandbox — to experiment.” Decided to start in Zimbabwe, shortly after the late 1990’s political crisis and during a period of explosive inflation.
09:07 am
Strive explains how Econet Wireless started their Eco Cash mobile wallet system in Burundi after the war, using Kenya’s M-pesa system as a model.
09:02 am
Welcome back to Day 2 of #SoFI2014! We’re excitedly waiting for Strive Masiyiwa to take the stage, so stay tuned…