Zero Balance? Zero Stress!
“Nitumie kwa hii line, ile yangu ya kawaida
iko na shida,” is slowly becoming the
evolutionary line of “tuma na ya kutoa.”
Ladies and gentlemen, that is how Fuliza
is transforming consumer conversations.
For those who might be reading this from
across borders, let me bring you home.
Fuliza is a service product from East and
Central Africa’s most profitable company
called Safaricom. It’s basically a mobile
overdraft facility that enables consumers
to proceed with their transactions even
if they are short of cash in their e-purse.
Probably a more familiar product you
might have heard of is MPESA; globally
acclaimed innovation that enhanced both
financial inclusion and created a path for
the world to follow-both products, come
from the same powerhouse. I believe we’re
now on the same page.
The service was launched in January 2019
and just like MPESA, it has literally
taken-on a life of its own. Picture this,
Fuliza hit one million subscriptions
within the first week, while its loan book
hit Ksh.1 billion. Should I scratch that?
I think I should. Fuliza hit one million
subscriptions within the first week, while
its loan book hit Ksh.1billion! That is a
mighty product. According to Safaricom
boss @Bob Collymore, not even in their
wildest dreams did they expect such
results. Beyond phenomenal, this product
is a case study.
Often times the larger population
works with the misplaced assumption
that established and big brands such
as Safaricom don’t really need to put in
effort. That somehow, brand equity will
do all the work for them; that they will
just unleash a product and it will sell.
Nothing could be further from the truth;
if anything, such brands put in ten times
the effort, invest ten times their resources
and spend ten times more man hours on
research, crunching numbers and making
sense of the same just to make sure they
continuously get it right.
Sure you’ve come across the phrase -
‘getting to the top is not the difficult
part, the hard work is staying on top.”
Well, seeing is believing; let’s see how @
Safaricom PLC got it right yet again.
Big Data
Dr.
David
Nersessian,
44 MAL30/19 ISSUE
a
polished
academician, a thought leader and a
global economic think tank recently
posited in one of his articles that digital
information has overtaken oil as the
world's most valuable commodity. That
“Big data technology is inherently global
and borderless,” he said. Now, I know the
thoughts above can generate a never-
ending debate, but with a little empirical
evidence from corporates such as
Safaricom, it’s actually something worth
thinking about.
According to Forbes contributing
columnist Lisa Arthur, “Big data is a
collection of data from traditional and
digital sources inside and outside your
company that represents a source for
ongoing discovery and analysis.” I think
amongst the myriad of definitions of
Big Data, I like this one – simple and
comprehensible.
Safaricom is home to 28,850,444
million prepaid customers, 1,093,197
million postpaid customers and a total
of 29,943,641 million customers as
at September 2018. These numbers
are according to data released by the
Communications Authority of Kenya in
their first quarter sector statistics report
for the financial year 2018/2019. During
the same period, the number of active
mobile subscriptions in the country stood
at 46.6 million. Therefore, Safaricom’s
global market share stood at 64.2%. Wow,
more than half of the Kenyan population
is with The Better Option.
I put these numbers out there so that we
can make crisp sense of what we’re talking
about. So in their register, you and I and
many more Kenyans have Safaricom as
custodians of our varied data. By their
nature, being in the “technology” sector,
these are guys who love data. Not just
Safaricom, all tech players. What makes
the difference however, is as Lisa puts it,
how one uses that collection for ongoing
discovery and analysis. And Safaricom are
Kings in this.
Within the same period ( Jul-Sep 2018),
Safaricom recorded a sum total of
1,585,729,101,317 as total Value in Kshs
of all Mpesa transactions. Just so we’re
not lost, that is close to 1.6 trillion Kenya
Shillings we are talking about (15.6 billion
USD) at the current conversion rate of the
day of posting this article. - Source: CA,
Operators’ Returns*. That is a massive
figure, within just three months; Mpesa
transacted amounts that could finance
Kenya’s current half budget.
With this data and data collected over
stretched periods, Safaricom invested in
it. They put out their time, human and
other resources to analyze all the data; I’m
talking big data analytics here and this is
what their research found. The findings
showed that millions of transactions
were being cancelled everyday because
of insufficient funds. And with all things
good research, you don’t stop at the
findings; you proceed to make sense of it.
So Safaricom saw the need of “providing
a facility that will enable that person to
have that transaction completed” and
boom! Fuliza was born to solve a specific
Often times we work with misplaced as-
sumptions that big brands such as Safa-
ricom don’t really need to put in effort.
That somehow, brand equity will do all
the work for them; that they’ll just un-
leash a product and it’ll sell. Nothing
could be further from the truth; if any-
thing, such brands put in ten times the
effort, invest ten times their resources
and spend ten times more man hours on
research, crunching numbers and mak-
ing sense of the same just to make sure
they continuously get it right.