M-Commerce
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E-commerce was all about making money on the internet; M-commerce is about making money with mobile phones. This discussion is mainly about India, but the examples could easily be applied to Kenya (btw – how is M-pesa doing?).
They are 200 million mobile phone users in India. Wow! How many are there in East Africa?
From bdafrica
M-pesa, the money transfer system, was also launched this year and signed up its 700,000th subscriber this month. “This product could be greater than the mobile phone. We are targeting one million users by the end of the year,” said Mr Joseph
700,000 already? – wow! I read earlier you said you thought the future for africa was in financing sme’s. I think the future is in E and M commerce.
E-commerce is a wash, not enough computers and they are too expensive. Mobile is the computer of africa, that space you must watch, but to get into that game you need financing to the tune of millions. So the chances of an enterpreneur (pun intended) playing is very small, unless you invest in safcom and hold (ok no more stock predictions).
As Ngozi mentioned… “All these businesses need capital” At the end of her presentation about how business are growing.
With a favorable economy people have and will continue to start businesses (i mean alot of businesses) and as the middle income market grows, these sme will need to invest in infrastructure to grow. Capital will be required regardless of the space.
In closing… I leave you will the following thought
An sme will need capital to enable M-commerce in the business
Not sure if you saw this article on CS Monitor:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/.....tml?page=1
This is about M-Pesa
Waiyaki
Thanks for that article, very interesting.
About CS Monitor : hmm… m-pesa stands for mteja-pesa and not mobile-pesa. And there is a bank behind this service (not local) but I forget the name. So i’m not sure about this article from a technical perspective.
As I was telling a couple of friends sometime back, safcom is the most profitable company in east africa and more profitable than the next 3 company combined…. That will be petty cash as compared to what m-pesa will do.
We are talking 1 million customers in less than a year in one country and they currently have 8 million customers. Plans are already underway to enable diaspora to send money home ($1 billion business). Then lets bring in east africa and more SME’s getting into this. It is scary.
KE
Here is a business idea…
Travel around east africa and look for goods that you believe can sell in kenya. Create a catalog and give it away at these traffic jams that people are complaining about. Now people can order and pay for the goods, you just transfer the order ot the manufacturer and keep a %. Start with lower priced items until people trust you and then increase to higher prices.
No utility costs, no office rent, no employees (order processing should be automatic), sell advertising in the catalog to further reduce costs and the best part NO INVENTORY… which I know is your sticking point.
Don:
Yes – that is a good idea and you are right: I don’t like inventory. So then, the only question that remains is WHAT to sell. I learnt this through my first business failure (you must be able to gauge demand for the product before you roll it out).
Then of course, what can the majority of Kenyans afford to buy? how many people have disposable income to spend on non-essential goods?
http://www.bdafrica.com/index......temid=5843
The above article will answer your questions.
-10,000 for a pair of boxers!
-Increasing the cost of haircut from 800 to 1000 so as to “reduce” the number of customers
There is a middle class in kenya. Seeing that you don’t have inventory, you can test as many diverse products as possible.
Ksh 10,000 is what? $150 dollars!! are those boxers lined with gold? the problem I found in Kenya is that the expensive things are not necessarily of good quality and I couldn’t understand why people were paying so much for them (maybe it’s cheaper than having to travel abroad and buy them)
A martini bar in Nairobi would be nice.
hmmm. I have to keep thinking