tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-45741828560619940512024-03-07T01:16:05.230-08:00ZoonaZoonahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305643332602605550noreply@blogger.comBlogger58125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-7982372250794866762015-02-02T05:00:00.003-08:002015-02-02T22:56:41.387-08:00The role of purpose in your personal and business brand developmentOn Saturday, 31st January 2015, I made my way to my first Girl Geek Breakfast. I have attended many Girl Geek Dinners (GGD) in Johannesburg and always enjoyed them so this was my first Cape Town experience - I was pretty excited. Sarah Rice was the guest speaker and her topic was:<br />
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<b>The role of purpose in your personal career development</b><br />
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She shared her personal journey, which I really enjoyed. Turning 40 and getting divorced last year, had a profound effect on her (as to be expected). She spent a lot of time reflecting on herself and her business, <a href="http://www.batstones.com/" target="_blank">Batstone </a>and during that process she discovered...<br />
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<b>Brand purpose drives sales far more than product marketing. Businesses need to ask themselves, "Why do we exist in the world."</b><br />
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She gave an example: An ISP selling <i>"fast internet connectivity"</i> doesn't stand out any more than their competitors in the cutthroat industry of giant Telecommunication companies. She spent hours, days and weeks work shopping with top executives until they finally uncovered, their Brand Purpose - <i>"connectivity is a human right." </i>Once<i> </i>they embraced that as their core value within the organisation, turned their marketing efforts to tell the world about this core belief, their sales increased as a result.<br />
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The same thing happened with Apple. In 1997, Apple wasn't doing so well so they hired Steve Jobs to turn things around. H largely focused on convincing Apple's employees to remember their Brand Purpose and forgot about the technical specs of products. Apple needed to shift focus from laptops, phones and other devices and move towards their a focus on their core beliefs. At Apple, they believe that <i>"people with passion can change the world." </i>Selling that message to their consumers, boosted sales and Apple forged ahead, leaps and bounds above their competitors without a single product campaign. Instead they focused on heroes, showing what ordinary people are capable of. As a result, Apple launched their <a href="http://youtu.be/TM8GiNGcXuM" target="_blank">"Think Different"</a> campaign which eventually saved the company from bankruptcy, built the greatest turnover in business history and transformed Apple into one of the most valuable corporations in the world.<br />
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Sarah also shared that while all these notions are great in theory, its important to follow up your purpose with delivery. I guess the same applies in businesses as it does in our personal lives. We need to focus on WHY we do what we do, and not so much WHAT we do. <b>Unlocking the WHY is far more important than the WHAT </b>and that's a major behavioural change that's required for Brands to soar beyond their competitors.<br />
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She left with words that really stuck with me. <b>"Have the right conversations, with the right people at the right time and you're bound to change the world." </b><br />
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<b>About Girl Geek Dinners:</b><br />
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<a href="http://ggdcpt.com/" target="_blank">Girl Geek Dinners</a> were founded on the 16th August 2005 as a result of one girl geek who got frustrated about being one of the only females attending technical events and being asked to justify why she was there by her male counterparts. She decided that she wanted this to change and to be treated just the same as any other geek out there, gender and age aside. After all to be geeky is to be intelligent, have passion for a subject and to know that subject in depth. It’s not at all about being better than others, or about gender, race, religion or anything else. Those things just detract from the real fun stuff, the technology, the innovation and the spread of new ideas.<br />
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<b>About Sarah Rice</b><br />
Sarah is a technology communications specialist with over a decade's worth of experience. She ran the IT focused PR agency, Sentient Communications, for almost nine years before shutting it down at the end of 2011. Sarah then worked with 22seven in an eight-month contract to launch the financial services product to the market, after which she joined South African social network, Mxit, as the VP: Communications. After two years as an employee Sarah realised that she was much happier being her own boss so in late 2013 she joined Brendan at Batstone. In other news she has two kids, an honours degree in Educational Drama, an unhealthy obsession with audible books and finished her studies without the use of 'The Internet’<br />
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<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-43793546180181374822015-01-28T22:07:00.000-08:002015-01-28T22:42:15.061-08:00Opportunity & Responsibility by Brett MagrathWhen I think back to the early days of starting up businesses these two factors have always played an interesting role. As an entrepreneur you are always on the lookout for opportunities. There are those that dream of the day and those that grab the opportunities with both hands. The interesting dynamic is that at no stage did I ever even consider the responsibility that came along with such a decision.<br />
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In 2007 when Brad and I first started working on Zoona there was an opportunity to get back into the entrepreneurial world, where we could control our own destiny. This time it was round three and maybe even the last chance after previous failed attempts. The opportunity was bigger, but having experienced failure before, plus I was now married to Cath with Eva on the way, this meant that the responsibilities of chasing this opportunity became a little more real.<br />
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By June 2009 we had a Bank of Zambia license, had past 1000 transactions in a month, we had built up our staff base and most importantly had proven we could survive…somehow. The opportunity was growing and the idea of become a successful Zambian money transfer business was real, but as always, as the opportunity got bigger so too did the responsibility. From a personal stand point Eva was now 2 years old and Cath was now pregnant with Jasper. My personal responsibilities had grown tremendously, but with the business growth the responsibilities towards our employees was also growing. Lots of things come to mind but two early examples that cross my mind are convincing Konrad to leave his job to join us right back in the early days and signing a bond application form for Leshain knowing she was now dependent on us being successful.<br />
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Over the years there have been numerous phases of opportunities and responsibilities and it has been great. The growth, in particular of our employees, which is our driver to achieve our goals. As a business Zoona has always set big goals, but those around us know we are building a track record of achieving them. If we look at our company WIG’s, this approach is strongly embedded in the company’s DNA and achieving these goals is no longer about certain individuals, but about ensuring that everyone in the company is ready to grab the opportunity with two hands knowing the responsibilities that come with it.<br />
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Having taken some time off on over the December holidays, it’s allowed me to reflect about what I see as the current state of Zoona’s opportunity and responsibility:<br />
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<b>Opportunity:</b><br />
I truly do believe that Zoona is well positioned to become a billion dollar business, I have listened to Mike say this for a number of years, but I am now a true believer. I genuinely believe that with our achievements to date and the team we are building that we have got to a level where this is more real than becoming a successful Zambian business was in 2009.<br />
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<b>Responsibility:</b><br />
Over the years I have seen a migration from personal responsibility to employee responsibility and now a responsibility to our agents. With our new focus on the consumer, it is time to fundamentally change how our market transacts and how their economies function. We need to move from being nominated as one of the top ten companies in the world to help girls out of poverty to THE top company that HAS achieved this. Our Zoona model can truly deliver impact and we need to take on the responsibility of understanding our customers and consumers and ensure that our products and services meet their expectations. By doing these simple things and ensuring that each day we are turning ideas into actions as rapidly as possible, we will achieve this.<br />
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<b>Here’s to a great 2015!</b><br />
<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-40426920410915764332015-01-25T23:05:00.000-08:002015-01-26T03:29:56.957-08:00Zoona Consumer Roadshow 2015 - Zambia<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">In January 2015, the first action point for the Consumer Insights team was to conduct a wide array of consumer focus groups in several different towns across Zambia. I must admit I was very excited, and a little anxious, about heading out into parts of Zambia I had yet to explore. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">This presented the perfect opportunity not only to learn more about Zoona’s consumer base, but to also develop a better understanding of what Zambia looks and feels like. So the towns were picked, and although we couldn’t fit the entire country into our one week of travel, we were about to get an in-depth introduction into Central, Copperbelt, and Northwestern provinces. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Saviour The Mechanic</span></td></tr>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The trip began for me in Lusaka where Saviour and I would drive to Ndola (about a 5 hour trip) to pick up Megan and Fearne, who were arriving from South Africa the following day. As we drove out of Lusaka, and through Kabwe, I was struck by how beautiful the countryside is during the height of the rainy season. Everything was so green and vibrant. Once we collected Fearne and Megan from the airport, the true journey really began. I can’t think of a better (or at the very least more revealing) way to get to know your colleagues than by buckling your seatbelt and strapping in for what would be approximately 18 hours in a car together over the course of one week. If this isn’t the definition of “Making it Real” then I don’t know what is! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anyways, back to the important stuff: Consumer Insights! </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In each of the towns we visited we did two things: </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We walked around the town visiting the booths.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We held consumer focus groups. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XG9oqdKev6E/VMYe4l7GjwI/AAAAAAAAAJM/-WIVOtCSYGE/s1600/IMG_0318.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XG9oqdKev6E/VMYe4l7GjwI/AAAAAAAAAJM/-WIVOtCSYGE/s1600/IMG_0318.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;">So we set off from the airport, having collected Megan and Fearne, and set off for our first destination: Solwezi. Although warned before-hand by a few of our colleagues who had previously done this drive about the condition of the roads, I still don’t think any of us were prepared for what we were about to experience. Having left Kitwe late in the afternoon, we hit the part of the road that was in the worst condition just as it was getting dark! Cue Massive Thunderstorm. I have skydived, I have bungee jumped, but I must say driving this stretch of unpaved road full of potholes in the pitch black, in a downpour of rain definitely tops my list of ‘thrilling’ experiences. So just to give some context, the reason that I have spent so much time describing these first few hours of the trip is because in my mind it set the tone for the rest of the trip. It gave us massive insight into what it means to drive 50km on an unpaved road full of potholes (which even in the best of conditions would not be an easy feat) in a more rural part of Zambia. It allowed us to contemplate more realistically the challenges that face the communities located along these stretches of road many kilometres away from the nearest town, and bank. Relative to this first car ride up to Solwezi, the rest of the driving that week was a breeze! </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;">A note about the focus groups: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">They were each organised by the aggregator agent based in the area, and I am so proud of Angela, Sandra, Paul, and Misozi for doing an amazing job in bringing these events together from the location to the group of participants.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well done Paul, Misozi, Angela and Sandra for organising top notch focus groups.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">What I enjoyed most:</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Great looking Zoona kiosks</span></td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I very much enjoyed getting to walk around and get a real feel for the towns we were visiting, and what doing transactions at Zoona outlets in these towns really looked like and felt like. I spoke both with Zoona consumers outside of outlets, and strangers who may have never even heard of Zoona before. The major insight I gained from conversations at the outlets is that casual consumers were relatively happy with the Zoona service and mostly used it for business purposes or to support their families, and that everyone from students to lawyers to housewives use Zoona in some way to access financial services.
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">Surprising insights:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Something that surprised me from my conversations with strangers (which consisted of me going up to random people asking if they knew where I could send money) was that fewer of them used or had heard of Zoona than I expected. Actually, the majority of them pointed me in the direction of Shoprite, which in their words is the cheapest and therefore best. This was a huge eye opener for me because I personally had been very unaware of how Shoprite was actually affecting our business through competition on the ground. All in all these casual conversations proved very fruitful and were a great way to meet present (and hopefully future!) Zoona consumers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">Focus group learnings:</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finally, we come to the focus groups (wasn’t this the whole point of the trip to begin with?!). I think it was great that we undertook these events for our Zoona consumers. It provided us with in-depth insights into how our top consumers interact with and use our product while also allowing us to show our appreciation to our top consumers. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">In conclusion:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These sessions allowed us to understand and interact with our consumers in a way that isn't feasible over the phone or even in casual surveys outside of outlets. I really enjoyed hearing about consumers’ first experiences using Zoona and how they had heard about it. I found it enlightening to hear about how the quality of customer service from tellers was inconsistent, and how regular consumers wanted to be recognized as more than a casual consumer with promotions or discounts. It was like we got an all access pass to everything Zoona, in it’s everyday existence. We can now move forward in a productive direction and provide our consumers with exactly the products and improvements that would help them most. Zoona has built a strong foundation for itself, and is clearly appreciated by it’s consumers. I think that through the insights gained on this roadshow, Zoona has empowered itself to truly “make it real” for it’s consumers. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The crazy Zoona team with Sandra</span></td></tr>
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Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-20381443467136956192014-12-10T03:15:00.000-08:002014-12-10T04:28:18.193-08:00Learnings from the Girl Effect Accelerator<h2>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEievekrKrxf8yyLLq0mVGUawbhN336pDsbPn3tI8HH_UPKxh-EuNZN_3MRolovZgUtcrRjAXdjMrj1awYSENvmVRfpri_vcZRnZrpNSnKYVre3JdDXEEcbdK5stI-faMZxbl5aiYFFMhXg/s1600/Mike+presenting.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEievekrKrxf8yyLLq0mVGUawbhN336pDsbPn3tI8HH_UPKxh-EuNZN_3MRolovZgUtcrRjAXdjMrj1awYSENvmVRfpri_vcZRnZrpNSnKYVre3JdDXEEcbdK5stI-faMZxbl5aiYFFMhXg/s1600/Mike+presenting.png" height="207" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mike sharing the Zoona story</td></tr>
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Zoona was recently selected by the <a href="http://unreasonablegroup.com/" target="_blank">Unreasonable Group</a> and <a href="http://about.nike.com/pages/the-nike-foundation" target="_blank">Nike Foundation</a> for the <a href="http://girleffectaccelerator.com/" target="_blank">Girl Effect Accelerator</a> because of the impact our business is having on girls and young women in Africa. Girls in Zambia and Malawi are able to get jobs as Zoona tellers, become business owners as Zoona Agents, and develop into entrepreneurs as Zoona Aggregators. These opportunities enable them to re-invest their income back into their children’s education (when they choose to have children), creating positive ripples across their communities.<br />
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This is the <a href="http://www.girleffect.org/" target="_blank">Girl Effect</a> in action, and we believe that Zoona has the potential to multiply this many times over.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI8bhlMt2yRKs9kB3pNqSnXZsiMbbb3YCc9i1ZMDcU2OlfzGWKPT3_jLUef-r5_FWnod3qwGoLZcRLCrKWZ7S83v9rQ-C6YF-1J-ts3yqyySLFD94UNqAivr5JoCLTsha6TWxmmRB7xo8/s1600/Workshop3.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI8bhlMt2yRKs9kB3pNqSnXZsiMbbb3YCc9i1ZMDcU2OlfzGWKPT3_jLUef-r5_FWnod3qwGoLZcRLCrKWZ7S83v9rQ-C6YF-1J-ts3yqyySLFD94UNqAivr5JoCLTsha6TWxmmRB7xo8/s1600/Workshop3.png" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
Last month, Lelemba Phiri and I had the privilege of attending this two week accelerator program at Campovida, two hours north of San Francisco.<br />
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If I could sum up our experience in one word, it would be: “accelerating”!<br />
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Despite the relaxed camping environment with shared tents and outdoor showers, the two weeks was packed full of mind altering conversations and business building activities. Check out this great <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7cdQnuHwVc" target="_blank">video </a>summarizing the experience.<br />
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The quality of the other entrepreneurs was phenomenal, and we felt humbled to be in their presence. The other participants are truly taking on the world’s toughest challenges – and succeeding. And all of them are real businesses that are growing incredibly quickly. The cohort had operations in 30+ countries and averaged $2.2 million in revenue last year. Each of these ventures deserves a mention and all the support we can give them!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUJiVd2k-AqDiemtOC4_PKLeUtNQ-_F5vdcSDx21Czc2U5OdJFNrWRe1IUMtp80O88_xN7XNELb6U-s8WI9rwWiLQHSrnKEF9GEsPs3PHLEGTMJvY8LD883RnQQAlL4mDrwimIgCNiTMU/s1600/Workshop1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUJiVd2k-AqDiemtOC4_PKLeUtNQ-_F5vdcSDx21Czc2U5OdJFNrWRe1IUMtp80O88_xN7XNELb6U-s8WI9rwWiLQHSrnKEF9GEsPs3PHLEGTMJvY8LD883RnQQAlL4mDrwimIgCNiTMU/s1600/Workshop1.png" height="212" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marketing guru Seth Godin teaches all</td></tr>
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<a href="http://www.bridgeinternationalacademies.com/" target="_blank">Bridge International Academies</a><br />
<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/arunachalam_muruganantham_how_i_started_a_sanitary_napkin_revolution" target="_blank">Jayashree Enterprises</a><br />
<a href="http://www.mypaga.com/" target="_blank">Paga</a><br />
<a href="http://www.embraceinnovations.com/" target="_blank">Embrace</a><br />
<a href="http://www.enezaeducation.com/" target="_blank">Eneza</a><br />
<a href="http://www.greenlightplanet.com/" target="_blank">Green Light Planet</a><br />
<a href="http://www.offgrid-electric.com/" target="_blank">Off Grid Electric</a><br />
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/arts/design/cleaning-up-the-african-kitchen.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&" target="_blank">Eco Fuel Africa</a><br />
<a href="http://www.shopsoko.com/" target="_blank">Soko</a><br />
<a href="http://www.ayzh.com/" target="_blank">Ayzh</a><br />
<a href="http://www.zanaafrica.org/" target="_blank">ZanaAfrica</a><br />
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Despite our differing geographies and industries, I was astounded by how we were all facing similar business challenges. From raising capital to building a team to achieving focus to scaling into new markets, all start-ups have to overcome the same hurdles around the world. These challenges – and our perseverance to overcome them – are what connect entrepreneurs together. I learned so much from this group and am proud to call them all friends.<br />
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We were also humbled to receive so much advice and coaching from an astonishing set of mentors that came to stay with us during the program and help us work on our businesses. Some of the key highlights include:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2LiN-UGhvSm-dzENhoN9w5Its3mZoTrPL4hR4-8pDq0-OF1oN53dCek0i9dYhPl_LxCasi8yeCV17nIvoeo5-1LsgIa9fIM-RI620tjA-dBZWoYA64OVvvau1yBYdteDm75aQpZfnpRo/s1600/Chello.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2LiN-UGhvSm-dzENhoN9w5Its3mZoTrPL4hR4-8pDq0-OF1oN53dCek0i9dYhPl_LxCasi8yeCV17nIvoeo5-1LsgIa9fIM-RI620tjA-dBZWoYA64OVvvau1yBYdteDm75aQpZfnpRo/s1600/Chello.png" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Entertained by Michael Fitzpatrick</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<a href="http://unreasonableinstitute.org/profile/tchi/" target="_blank"><b>Tom Chi</b>,</a> a co-founder of Google X that designed <b>Google Glasses </b>and driverless cars, shared a rapid prototyping framework designed to help our business learn 10X faster.<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.jeffhoffman.com/" target="_blank">Jeff Hoffman</a></b>, founder of <b>Priceline.com</b>, helped us craft a brand message to lead our growth as we scale into new markets.</div>
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<b><a href="http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/" target="_blank">Seth Godin</a>,</b> taught us the secret of <b>marketing</b> by distilling it down to its most simple form: “people like us do things like this”.<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.michaelfitzpatrick.com/Michael_Fitzpatrick/HOME.html" target="_blank">Michael Fitzpatrick</a>,</b> one of the <b>world’s top cellists</b>, mesmerizing us with sounds in a private concert.</div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr3Q8BhEphyphenhyphen1dgpuHOacjAoNAJc4-q_ZG5g9gMgrJVTNHXDtoA9gYwhHrocXHWUiiEjolufJTl4L6hEFlXv1pVxYvBNsdwFp3pzD0JPZCwgMhYwqQc5KAlgw0laoAWgIaBI2IQeNaYMWY/s1600/Patrick.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr3Q8BhEphyphenhyphen1dgpuHOacjAoNAJc4-q_ZG5g9gMgrJVTNHXDtoA9gYwhHrocXHWUiiEjolufJTl4L6hEFlXv1pVxYvBNsdwFp3pzD0JPZCwgMhYwqQc5KAlgw0laoAWgIaBI2IQeNaYMWY/s1600/Patrick.png" height="233" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Great support from Google's Patrick Pichette</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><br /></b><b><a href="https://www.google.com/about/company/facts/management/" target="_blank">Patrick Pichette</a></b>, the <b>CFO of Google</b> and a huge Zoona supporter, drove 3.5 hours (each way!) to visit for an afternoon and shared insights into how to build a culture of A-players.</div>
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The program culminated with each company presenting to an audience of 600 people at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. This was a fabulous experience and one that helped spread the message that entrepreneurship can be a tremendous force for good in the world.<br />
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Zoonahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305643332602605550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-43210679445738705452014-11-11T23:06:00.003-08:002014-11-11T23:06:59.704-08:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Trying to Scale Excellence in Africa<o:p></o:p></u></i></b></div>
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My big mouth and me. I do one blog about the importance of
scaling excellence and then a mate of mine and entrepreneur I admire asks me
for some insights on how best to do it. Serves me right but in the interests of
sharing and starting a good conversation.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So let me be upfront. I largely have absolutely no idea but
this is what we are trying.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Accept upfront that great ideas are by and large
worthless. The value in Africa is the team and the ability of that team to execute.
Capital in Africa follows traction not concept</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">We as Africans need to stop assimilating risk –
we need to celebrate not cut the tall poppies. Rather then seeing someone
stumble go “see I told you they were running to fast” rather go and pick them
up and say “that was brave now just go and try again with what you have learnt”</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Keep an open mind. Often we are so busy in the
doing – we miss the wood from the trees. We need to re-structure our work
calendars from 100% the chaos of today, to 30% today and 70% the future – you
can not create the business of tomorrow or you are being obliterated by the
business of today</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Be disruptive. Just because it is, does not mean
it should be</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Be brave – sometime you just have to trust your
gut as there are not enough data or reference points to be sure you are right</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Appreciate it is a global village – if you are
standing still you are going backwards at a rate of knots</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Hard work, hard work, hard work – I like to
watch the Yoda clip from Star Wars: Do or do not, there is no try</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Dream big, surround yourself with good people,
have fun and get just get stuff done</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Always ask and challenge your model – are we
delivering value that someone is willing to pay for</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">If you cannot explain what you do in a simply
way, you do not know what you are trying to do well enough. Forget the elevator
pitch – find a kid and tell them what you do – if it is simple and they
understand you are golden</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">The customer is everything – repeat it until you
can no longer see anything else in your vision. Plot every engagement you have
with them and then establish what are the two or three things that are most
important to them – not to you, but to them and then just focus your best
efforts and people and those few things until on what matters to them you are exceptional
at</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Start from the bottom and the beginning but at
every step of the way meets the customer expectations. So maybe you want to
create a car – rather start with a skateboard and re-iterate and improve the
model till it grows up to be a car but make sure it was an awesome skateboard
that improved. Do not dream of building a great car but give the customer a
useless car as version one</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Slow down to speed up, start with your actual
existing processes, get visibility, make incremental improvement – and then get
ahead of the curve</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Surround yourself with A Players and invest in
their growth and development but also set expectations and make sure they have
absolute clarity on what is expected of them and the need for them to set up
and be accountable and take ownership. If they are the right people you need to
then get out of their way and let them be awesome. If they are not the right
people then you are in big trouble. Whatever time you personally are spending
on recruiting talent – increase it by 400%. Getting the right people into the
company is critical. Donald Trump might be able to go “ you are fired” – we do
not have that – so just understand the absolute technical debt of poor
performers in your company and just absolute get the talent pool into your
business as a hallmark of excellence. When someone starts at your company you
need to know they will be an A Player in the environment and culture of your
business. Remember an A Player in one company might not equal and A player in
yours – hire for culture and fit – and focus on future potential in your
company and not past performance in another</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">You must create, live and breathe your company
values and beliefs. These are not just for the wall and dusty storerooms, but
need to be yours and the business compass and guide in every big decision you
make or the company your make. Your staff and customers need to know these and
see by your actions that you are accountable to them. As you scale and pressure
mounts these need to be your cornerstone to keeping you grounded – and as your
time gets further away from the coalface what the business stands for is felt</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Foster communication channels for good stuff to
happen. It is not about everyone agreeing but having a voice. Seek out the
quietest voice in the room. But once everyone has spoken decisions then needed
to made and supported and driven – regardless of whether people agreed, if they
have ben heard they must then jump onboard</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Focus on two or three big things. You cannot be
great at everything. Chose two and three and then strive for excellence at
those and only those. Find the “choke point” for your customer – the thing they
value most and then make that your center of excellence</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Learn the power of the word no and create a
system that makes is easy for you to go: that is not my core, that is not what
will make us excellent – and because if I do it – it will slow down my journey
to excellence – so no I cannot take that project</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Generate cash. Given the cost and scarcity of
good growth capital, grasp that turnover is vanity, profit sanity and cash
reality. Get enough cash and runway for your business – and making smarter
decisions gets easier</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Be resilient as the continent we call home – if this
was easy everyone could do it</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Share – this is something that is new to us –
lets create a growing entrepreneurial community rather than isolated secrets of
success</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Truly embrace – the one-day chicken, next day
feathers. There is no way you have ever made it – the moment you stop focusing
and improving or thinking you are a bwana you are dusted</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Even if you are a goldfish in a shark tank –
just decide to be the shark. Someone is going to win why not us</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Get consistent in delivery – excellence is not a
one off – it is being able to do something on repeat over and over again well</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Invest in yourself. If Usain Bolt and the best
sports teams in the world have coaches – then surely so should you and your
teams. Statistically the best investment you can make is education – so invest
in educating and growing you and your team</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Grasp that to scale excellence we as the
founders and leaders are often the bottleneck. We need to move from being doers
to enablers. Be prepared to unlearn your own skills and re-learn the skills
that a growing business needs</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -18pt;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Spend your time on the most important things as
our time is the most important resource we have</span></li>
</ul>
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hHope there might be some value in the read - <span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; font-weight: bold; line-height: 18.2000007629395px; text-indent: 0px;">Sahle kahle Brad</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08655201691362596255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-48793954674119836822014-11-10T06:28:00.001-08:002014-11-10T11:39:31.490-08:00Zoona Joins the B Corp Movement! <div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-90022b46-9a15-1326-ef5c-3cb46fa74146" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Zoona is thrilled to announce that we are now officially a </span><a href="http://www.bcorporation.net/community/zoona"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Certified Benefit Corporation</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.bcorporation.net/community/zoona"> </a>– the first company in southern Africa to receive such recognition. There are over 1,000 Certified B Corps in 34 countries from over 60 industries. Zoona is proud to now add Zambia, Malawi, and South Africa to that list for the first time, and to join a community of companies who have committed to be both the best in the world and the best </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">for</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> the world.</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Y47FaumiSpA/VGDLVQOsMZI/AAAAAAAAAJs/-LngltuXBL0/s1600/bcorp.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Y47FaumiSpA/VGDLVQOsMZI/AAAAAAAAAJs/-LngltuXBL0/s1600/bcorp.png" height="200" width="158" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">What does it mean to be a Certified B Corp? For Zoona, it means that we are able to prove to the world that Zoona is an awesome company that’s delivering great value to our employees and our agent network, and as a result to the communities they serve. As our CEO Mike Quinn said, “Joining B Corp is a great way to show our commitment to use business to help emerging entrepreneurs grow. It's also a critical step towards our goal of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">becoming the most trusted money transfer service in our operating markets.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We are proud to be part of the movement to bring high standards of accountability to companies in Africa and worldwide, and are confident that this accountability will help to ensure that we are able to empower emerging entrepreneurs and to continue to improve as we expand to new markets. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The B Corp assessment process evaluated Zoona on our commitment to our employees, customers, ethical standards, and to environmental protection. Now that we’ve completed the assessment (with a rockstar above-average score, we might add!) we have a framework to measure our success against rigorous values and responsible practices as we scale as a company. The framework ensures that we are delivering value to all of our stakeholders: our investors, agents, individual customers, employees, and to the broader community.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We shall strive to grow as a business with our values at the forefront: Integrity, Fun, Entrepreneurship, Commitment, and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Togetherness and Being Real so that we can help communities thrive!</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></div>
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In other words, Zoona is </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtoKuTKFFi8&feature=youtu.be" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">awesome</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">!</span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-42680077538156313882014-11-10T01:07:00.000-08:002014-11-10T01:07:21.227-08:00Rwanda Reflections<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt;">I have just spent a pretty special week in Rwanda and thought I
would share some insights.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt;">First Impressions of Rwanda<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt;">So my brother and co-founder of Zoona and I
ended up going to Boarding School from 7 years old in SA and ended up swapping
parents and holidays in Singapore and Zambia for our childhood. Having spent
time in Singapore as a kid, Kigali bought back a lot of the same memories. On
the surface very clean, efficient, and gearing for growth with a big sense of
community and purpose – in fact both cities are the only ones I have been in
that I have not seen a single piece of litter, anywhere. Below the surface though,
you sense an underlying current that the option of towing the line is not
really up for debate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt;">This time last year I was in Mauritius and the
Minister of Commerce publically stated his government had Rwanda on their radar
as one of the countries that could compete on their national strategies, and
having been there I could see why. There is a real commitment and positivity
towards investment and growth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt;">Sharing is Caring<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt;">I had a really good conference with Omidyar
team and investees. The key difference was that it was driven and focused on
sharing and solving problems. Often these events focus on a few smart people
talking down to you – which can be pretty draining. This event just put issues
on the table and open and transparent conversations followed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt;">My key takeaways were: be excellent at your
core, scale excellence, get focused, attract and maximize talents of A players,
and, get serious about your personal and business flow and development as an
entrepreneur. These are all key challenges and opportunities faced by so many
businesses.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt;">Playing it forward<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt;">I was invited to the IT tech hub and got to
present to some up and coming tech entrepreneurs from Rwanda, Egypt and
Nigeria. Really enjoyed the event and it was awesome to share the Zoona stories
and all our ups and downs and to really sense the positive impact on some young
talent. Mentorship and sharing small success stories like ours can help create
more and more people who are committed to change in Africa.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt;">Hitting a brick wall<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt;">While we were in Kigali we spent an afternoon
at the Genocide Memorial. Like many of us I have been fortunate and blessed to
have a pretty normal and even privileged life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt;">The visit to the memorial was something that
had a profound impact on me. In brief, 700,000 men, woman and children were systematically
and brutally murdered, mutilated and raped in a blink. The memorial was set up
to remember, respect and reconcile. When I walked out at the end, going through
the child chamber, the only words that I can use to describe me was...I was an
empty shell and really felt my soul was crushed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt;">For the rest of the day and night I felt
really lost. The next morning I started to feel my batteries recharging. Sitting
in a room with all the other Omidyar investees it was just so clear that good
people trying to do good things is all that really matters. I know we rightfully
talk about bottom line and revenue growth...These are all so key and critical
but so too is the impact a business can have.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt;">I really am humbled and celebrate the impact
we, as a team, have in Africa. The more we grow and scale, the greater that
impact will be. So as much as we are motivated and driven by our business
success we should also know that the positive impact Zoona has on individuals,
communities and countries, and maybe one day a continent, is certainly
something to ponder on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08655201691362596255noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-90696554646010783952014-10-24T05:43:00.004-07:002014-10-24T05:43:35.101-07:00GSMA Mobile for Development Impact publishes Zoona case study<a href="http://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">GSMA Mobile for Development Impact</span></a><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> supports the digital empowerment of people in emerging markets through its Mobile for Development resource. It is a central platform of data, analysis and insight used to inform investment and design decisions for mobile services. Check out what they have to say about </span><a href="http://www.ilovezoona.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Zoona</span></a><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> by </span><a href="https://wiki.gsmaintelligence.com/gsma_kb/images/c/cb/Zoona-pdf-final.pdf" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">viewing the full case study here.</span></a>Zoonahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305643332602605550noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-30873281034883163362014-10-20T05:15:00.001-07:002014-10-20T05:15:56.520-07:00Extending reach: Mobile money in rural areas<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This month, Zoona is mentioned in Jennifer Frydrych and Hege Aschim's report on the progression of Mobile Money in rural areas. Key findings show that Zoona's success is largely due to nurturing and growing relationships with local emerging entrepreneurs. Read the full article <a href="http://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/2014_DI_Extending-reach_Mobile-money-in-rural-areas.pdf" target="_blank">here</a></span><br />
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Zoonahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305643332602605550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-91364056797828861012014-10-13T06:41:00.001-07:002014-10-13T06:41:30.543-07:00Zoona attends the Global Youth Economic Opportunities Summit
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More than 74 million young people worldwide are
unemployed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This massive number presents
both a challenge and an opportunity for the private companies, non-profits,
governments, academics, and funders who are focused on creating opportunities
for youth globally.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This week, Zoona
joined 450+ of those most interested in creating sustainable change for youth
at the Global Youth Economic Opportunities Summit in Washington, D.C. </div>
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The Summit was a great opportunity to learn how Zoona’s
support for emerging entrepreneurs in Africa connects with the larger picture
of support to youth entrepreneurs globally.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At Zoona, we have created at least 750 new jobs in Zambia through our
agent network, and recently partnered with the <a href="https://twitter.com/NycomMalawi">National Youth Council of Malawi</a> to
recruit and train over 80 young people to manage Zoona agent locations in
Malawi. </div>
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Our agents are empowered to manage their own business while receiving
financing, marketing, and training support from Zoona. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Training is critical to their success; yet,
it’s also a challenge, and to meet this challenge we are constantly learning,
updating and modifying our training program.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Therefore, we were interested in much of the work presented at the
conference on enterprise development, including the Enterprise Your Life
approach to building life skills presented by <a href="http://www.ifad.org/">IFAD</a>,
<a href="http://www.makingcents.com/">Making Cents</a>, and <a href="http://www.silatech.com/">Silatech</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This approach highlighted how important life skills are for youth in
business.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, if a young person
doesn’t think that she can say no to adults, she won’t say no when an adult
asks her to buy something on credit, even if she would prefer not to take this
risk with her business.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Considering these type of life skills, as well
as considering how young women and men may respond differently to the demands
of running a business, help us to build a comprehensive approach to our
training program.</div>
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As Zoona rapidly expands, we will continue to integrate
lessons from the wider industry as we create more and more opportunities for
young people in terms of both employment and ownership.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’re particularly excited to learn more at
the Nike Foundation/Unreasonable Institute <a href="http://zoonaafrica.blogspot.com/2014/10/zoona-has-been-invited-to-worlds-first.html">Girl
Effect Accelerator</a> next month.</div>
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For more on how Zoona is empowering youth through our agent
network, I highly encourage you to listen to our agent tell you in their words
by checking out <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F207VpMgKyI">these
testimonials</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-72273101210509938982014-10-06T23:36:00.000-07:002014-10-06T23:36:39.609-07:00Zoona has been invited to the world's first accelerator program dedicated to benefit millions of girls in poverty<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.ilovezoona.com/" target="_blank">Zoona</a> has been selected to the <a href="http://girleffectaccelerator.com/" target="_blank">Girl Effect Accelerator</a>, the world’s first accelerator dedicated to benefiting girls in poverty. The program is being launched as a partnership between <a href="http://nikeinc.com/pages/the-nike-foundation" target="_blank">The Nike Foundation</a> and <a href="http://unreasonablegroup.com/" target="_blank">Unreasonable Group</a>. Beginning on October 31st, just outside of San Francisco, this exclusive 2-week program will bring together 10 companies that are positioned to impact the lives of millions of adolescent girls living in poverty with world-class mentors, strategic financing, and an access to a global network of support. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Today, less than two cents of every international development dollar goes to girls – the very people who could do most to end poverty,” says Shaifali Puri, executive director of global innovation at the Nike Foundation. “As long as girls remain invisible, the world misses out on a tremendous opportunity for change.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Zoona has been selected to participate because the Girl Effect Accelerator selection committee is convinced that Zoona represents one of the 10 most promising startups in the world positioned to empower and impact girls across emerging markets in Africa. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“We aren’t working with your typical Silicon Valley startup in this program,” says Daniel Epstein, who is directing the Girl Effect Accelerator and is the founder of the Unreasonable Institute and Unreasonable Group. “The 10 selected ventures currently operate in over 30 countries and averaged over $2 million in revenue last year off of customers living on less than $2 a day.” According to Epstein, “We are hedging our bets on true “black swans:” startups who have significant market traction, are working in the fastest emerging markets of our time, and are positioned to measurably benefit millions of girls in poverty. The team at Zoona is exactly the type of venture we are privileged to be working with.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the program, the entrepreneurs will be meeting with 20 renowned mentors including Jessica Jackley, co-founder of Kiva.org, George Kembel, founder of the Stanford d.school, Seth Godin, serial entrepreneur and author, and Paul Polak who has uplifted over 20 million people from poverty. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“We are launching the Girl Effect Accelerator as a real-world experiment to better understand the impact that entrepreneurs, investors, and business can bring to girls in poverty,” says Puri. “Today there are over 250 million girls living in poverty. Every year, more than $120Bn is spent in international development assistance, yet this system has yet to produce the game-changing results we all desire for girls and the world. This program is designed to bring new problem solvers to the table: entrepreneurs.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to Epstein, “The Girl Effect Accelerator aims to spark a conversation around how business investors, and entrepreneurs can put a positive dent on history. Zoona serves as a prime example of a venture that is solving problems we didn’t think were solvable, in markets most don’t yet consider to be markets, with technologies we didn’t know existed – profitably. Each of these selected companies shares a common eagerness to experiment in what it means to measurably benefit millions of girls in poverty.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The accelerator will conclude with a Culminating Event at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco on November 11th. And if you are an investor and you have questioned why entrepreneurs aren’t solving harder and more meaningful problems, you may be interested in attending the private investor gathering on November 12th. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For more information about The Girl Effect Accelerator, and to sign up for the culminating event on November 11th and the private investor gathering on November 12th please visit: </span><a href="http://girleffectaccelerator.com/"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://girleffectaccelerator.com/</span></a><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><strong>About the Girl Effect</strong><br />The Girl Effect is a movement focused on the unique potential of adolescent girls to end poverty for themselves, their families, their communities, their countries and the world. Created by the Nike Foundation, in collaboration with the NoVo Foundation, United Nations Foundation and Coalition for Adolescent Girls, The Girl Effect is fuelled by hundreds of thousands of girl champions who recognize the untapped potential of adolescent girls living in poverty.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>About Unreasonable Group</strong> <br />The vision behind Unreasonable Group found its roots at the Unreasonable Institute, an international accelerator for early stage entrepreneurs who leverage business to tackle major social and environmental challenges that Daniel Epstein founded in the summer of 2010. Epstein later founded The Unreasonable Group with the goal of launching a portfolio of companies that will together support the next generation of entrepreneurs aimed at leveraging profit to tackle seemingly intractable social and environmental problems.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>About Nike Foundation</strong> <br />The Nike Foundation leverages the power of insights, innovation and inspiration to stop the cycle of intergenerational poverty. As a company, Nike believes in the power of human potential. At the Nike Foundation, we invest exclusively in what we see as the greatest source of untapped human potential in the world today: adolescent girls. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>10 Selected Companies</strong> </span><ol>
<li><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bridge International Academies: The world’s largest and fastest growing chain of schools. Educating over 100,000 children for an average of $6 a month. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eco-Fuel Africa: Converting agricultural waster into clean, inexpensive, cooking fuel for Africans. Supporting over 500 women entrepreneurs and ensuring thousands of girls stay in school. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Embrace: Empowering mothers who are not able to access traditional healthcare. First product is the world’s most affordable ‘infant warmer.’ More than 20,000 mothers in poverty have already benefited from this life-saving technology.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eneza: Fastest growing mobile education app in Africa. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Greenlight Planet: Sold over 2 million solar home lights to off-grid families, and continuing to skyrocket distribution and reach. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Jayashree Industries: Making radically affordable sanitary pads to prevent health complications and school dropout amongst girls. Over 1,500 women owned franchises. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Paga: #1 mobile payments service in Nigeria. Over 1.8 million users. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Off-Grid Electric: Using mobile phones for a pay-as-you-go service to electricity for families in extreme poverty. Electrifying over 1,000 homes with solar each month. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Soko: Giving disadvantaged women and girl artisans in Africa the ability to sell directly to international customers through their mobile phones. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Zoona: Fastest growing and #1 mobile money operator in Zambia with a mission to help businesses grow. </span></li>
</ol>
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Zoonahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305643332602605550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-85705142579033318512014-06-27T01:33:00.000-07:002014-06-27T01:34:39.131-07:00The Zoona story: Empowering MSMES via Mobile Money Transfer in Zambia<br />
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In 2007, I experienced a turning point in my life. I was completing a theoretical master’s degree in Development Management from the London School of Economics following three years of volunteering in Ghana and Zambia with Engineers Without Borders Canada. I was hungry to get back to Africa as a social entrepreneur, but deep down I felt that I lacked the experience and expertise in business I would need to have the impact I craved. A friend referred me to the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford’s Said Business School, and the moment I opened their webpage I knew I wanted to be there. I applied and was extremely fortunate to be selected as a Skoll Scholar.</div>
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The year at Oxford was game changing in so many ways. I shook hands with the visiting President of Ghana in my first month, became friends with some of the most accomplished and talented people I had ever met, built a business network to draw on in the future, and filled my brain with knowledge on topics such as venture capital, organizational design, and social enterprise business models. I also got engaged to my wonderful wife Isabelle, thanks to all of the Oxford fancy balls I took her to!</div>
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I also came up with an idea. I would start a business connecting real entrepreneurs in Africa with impact-focused venture capital funds in Europe and North America. I made a business card with the name “African Enterprise Partners” and the logo of a baobab tree and started handing it out at every opportunity. One of my professors of a social enterprise class, Kim Alter, helped me refine the idea into a pitch and introduced me to the Grassroots Business Fund (GBF). Shortly after finishing my MBA, I was back on a plane to Zambia on a GBF consulting contract in search of my first investment deal.</div>
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My very first day back in Zambia, I was introduced to two entrepreneurs who also happened to be brothers. Brett Magrath sat quietly while Brad sold me on their start-up mobile payments business that was about to launch called “Mobile Transactions”. They had had built a mobile payment platform from scratch and wanted to empower micro and small businesses in Zambia to process mobile money transfers for the 85% of Zambian consumers that don’t have bank accounts. They were motivated by making money, but the social mission was central to their vision.</div>
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I spent the next two months emphatically selling the investment opportunity to GBF, which closed when the Fund boldly invested $200,000 of convertible debt into a business with only three months of revenues. They asked me to source new deals for them but my mind was made up that I was going to work day and night with Brad and Brett to make our business successful. And we had BIG dreams right from the beginning. When I stood in front of both brothers at our first ever strategy meeting and asked them what our vision was, Brad immediately replied, "Breakfast with Bill Gates". We decided we should tone it down and be more realistic so we settled on a "Cashless Africa."</div>
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For the first three years we were constantly out of cash. I tapped into my Oxford network and recruited my MBA classmate Keith Davies to join the team and manage our finances while I went out to raise more investment. In early 2012, we closed what was the first ever international venture capital round in a Zambian start-up. The <a href="http://www.omidyar.com/" style="color: #ffae47; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Omidyar Network">Omidyar Network</a>, <a href="http://www.accion.org/what-we-do/investing/frontier" style="color: #ffae47; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Accion Frontier">Accion Frontier Investments Group</a>, and<a href="http://skollcentreblog.org/2014/06/24/the-zoona-story-empowering-smes-via-mobile-money-transfer-in-zambia/www.saronafund.com" style="color: #ffae47; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Sarona Fund"> Sarona Asset Management Fund</a> put in nearly $4 million of equity, the proceeds of which have helped to put the company on steroids. </div>
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We rebranded to "Zoona", which means, "It’s Real" in a local Zambian language and is one of our core values. We have built a customer base of 500 agent outlets that service 500,000 unique consumers and process $25 million per month in transaction value. And we are growing rapidly: our headcount has increased from 44 people to 75 in the first half of 2014 alone as we gear up for expansion into new markets.The early days were exciting and we always thought we were on the verge of taking off. I remember how exhilarating it was handing out fliers in front of the government-owned post office in downtown Lusaka, which had a monopoly on the money transfer industry in Zambia, when Brad was placed under “citizen’s arrest” by the manager for attempting to steal their customers. So we set up one of our first agents 20 meters away. Five years on, that outlet now processes over $400,000 per month in transactions and is owned by a 24 year old woman named Misozi who operates an additional eight outlets, employs 14 people and earns over $9,000 per month in commissions. The social mission has become reality.</div>
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Our biggest challenge now is to prove we can do this at scale. Our vision is to build a billion dollar pan- African business that proves entrepreneurship can have social roots that make a big difference to people’s lives, while also making money. Zoona’s core purpose is to help small businesses grow. We want to become the best in the world at providing business solutions to micro, small, and medium enterprises in Africa that unlock their latent potential. Our mobile payments platform has evolved from money transfers to other transaction types, including payments from retailers to suppliers. We also provide affordable working capital finance and business management tools to our agents so that they can grow their businesses sustainably. Many of our agents are people under 30 years old who are first time entrepreneurs themselves and are creating jobs, servicing their communities, and helping their economy grow.</div>
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As Steve Jobs once famously said, "We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why else even be here?" My job at Zoona is to make sure we do just that.</div>
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Best,</div>
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Mike Quinn</div>
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Group CEO, Zoona</div>
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Follow me on twitter @ZoonaMike</div>
Zoonahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305643332602605550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-72624938121577865072014-06-16T01:57:00.000-07:002014-06-16T01:57:09.771-07:00Moving Beyond M-Pesa: Innovations In Financial Inclusion<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<b style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Everyone has now heard about the success of M-Pesa in Kenya. </span></b><span style="font-family: Calibri; text-align: justify;">With over 11.6 million active users, 79,000 agent outlets, and $1.1 billion in real time payments each month, M-Pesa has been a </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; text-align: justify;">game changer in the quest for ubiquitous financial inclusion</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; text-align: justify;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">M-Pesa has been so successful that mobile network operators (MNOs) have rolled out replicated models around the world based on the assumption that they can copy and paste M-Pesa’s success in other markets. In Africa, there are now 42.4 million active mobile money users with Airtel, MTN, Vodacom, and Tigo joining Safaricom with their own branded mobile money accounts and agent networks. Some have started to gain traction in certain markets, but the elephant in the room is that the vast majority of mobile money accounts are still dormant. GSMA estimated in June 2013 that only 43.1% of registered mobile money users in Africa had done a transaction on their account in the past 90 days, which was positively skewed from the global average of 29.9% by the inclusion of M-Pesa. Furthermore, another GSMA case study of an MNO in an African market found that only 13% of registered users were using their accounts frequently, with 4% of registered users generating 43% of the service’s revenues.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This begs an interesting question: are mobile network operators destined to be the “power stations” of mobile money as was the case with M-Pesa and is often assumed? I’m not convinced they will be – at least not everywhere (and maybe not in most places). MNOs are simply too big, too set in their ways, and make too much money off their core voice services to put in the proper time and attention to successfully build the mobile money infrastructure from scratch. Even when they try, they don’t seem to be that good at it – the lack of liquidity and poor customer service from MNO mobile money agents leaves much to be desired.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Who else can do it then? The obvious alternative is the banks. Equity Bank in Kenya is the poster child in this space, having made a commendable push towards financial inclusion by building an agent network to compete with M-Pesa’s and extend appropriate financial services to previously unbanked rural and urban customers. Equity is now looking to add “mobile” to their core “banking” offering by becoming a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) in partnership with Airtel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But besides Equity Bank, I would argue that banking the unbanked is just not in bankers’ DNA. Banks have been around for a long time, yet 2.5 billion people in lower and middle-income countries remain unbanked. And many of those that are banked don’t have any money in their accounts, despite being counted as “financially included”. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So who else is there? Luckily there are some new kids on the block: new groups of entrepreneurial start-up companies are stepping up to the plate. These companies are small, agile, and aren’t hamstrung by the organizational constraints and traditional business models of MNOs and banks. They are focused on developing solutions for customer segments that are underserved or are not being served at all. And crucially, they are attracting investment and going to scale.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">One grouping consists of service models mainly concentrated in East Africa that are plugging into all those mobile money accounts to create demand to use them. </span><a href="http://www.m-kopa.com/"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">M-Kopa</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> and </span><a href="http://offgrid-electric.com/"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Off-Grid:Electric</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> allow consumers to use their mobile money accounts to purchase electricity to power stand-alone devices in their homes. </span><a href="http://kopokopo.com/"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Kopo Kopo</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> enables merchants to accept mobile money to purchase goods at their shops. Many more of these companies are in the garage right now and will emerge in the coming years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Another grouping consists of companies like </span><a href="http://www.ilovezoona.com/"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Zoona</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> that are working in markets where mobile money has yet to take root. We help businesses grow by providing mobile payment and financial services to micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs). MSMEs in Africa are typically financially excluded or underserved, despite being key drivers of employment and economic growth. We are neither an MNO nor a bank, yet we issue mobile money and provide working capital finance to 500 MSME customers in Zambia. Each month, our MSME customers generate over $20 million in over-the-counter money transfers from a base of 500,000 unique consumers plus $5 million in mobile supplier payments to FMCG suppliers such as SABMiller. Furthermore, we focus on helping our MSME customers make money off of our services so they keep using them, open new outlets, hire new people, and generate more transactions. We also work closely with the regulator to engage them in what we do as we share common goals of financial inclusion and building a sustainable industry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In sum, we at Zoona are building our own mobile money infrastructure and plan to invite MNOs, banks, and the new service models above to plug in and provide value-added services to our fast growing customer base. We believe that companies like ours that are independent and agnostic of MNOs and banks have an important role to play in the future of this budding industry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Calibri;">What does the future of mobile money look like? </span></b><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In some markets, the M-Pesa model driven by MNOs will win with other services plugging in to create demand. But in many others, it will take companies like Zoona to build the infrastructure for the mobile money ecosystem to emerge. M-Pesa will be written into the history books as the catalyst for the industry, but in the future it will be one of many.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Best,<br /><br />Mike Quinn <br />Group CEO , Zoona<br />Follow me on Twitter at</span><span style="background: white; color: #4e4e4e; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.5pt;"> @<a href="https://twitter.com/ZoonaMike"><span style="color: purple;">ZoonaMike</span></a></span></div>
Zoonahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305643332602605550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-51262760595558174942013-12-28T20:44:00.002-08:002013-12-28T20:44:58.003-08:002013: Zoona’s Breakout Year!One year ago, I wrote a blog about how 2013 was going to be Zoona’s breakout year. We had spent most of 2012 securing our financing, getting the right people in the right seats on the Zoona bus, and focusing on a few key goals to put us on a path to success.<br />
<br />
And what a breakout year it was!<br />
<br />
To highlight but a few of our achievements in 2013:<br />
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<ul>
<li>We processed our 1 millionth Zoona money transfer since we launched in April 2009</li>
<li>Our agents and distributors processed 2.2 million cash in and out transactions valued at over $142 million</li>
<li>We injected over $500k in working capital to micro & small enterprises</li>
<li>We paid out over $1.4 million in commissions to our network of 200+ Zoona agents</li>
<li>We became cash flow positive!!!</li>
<li>We closed our first straight debt facility</li>
<li>We launched a partnership with Airtel Money in Zambia and integrated with their payment platform</li>
<li>We deepened our partnership with Zambian Breweries and are now processing a significant share of their payments</li>
<li>We released a new website, <a href="http://www.ilovezoona.com/">www.ilovezoona.com</a> </li>
<li>We appointed Lelemba Phiri as our Managing Director in Zambia as a strong signal that our Zambian entity can now stand on its own two feet</li>
</ul>
<br />
These are considerable achievements that would not have been possible without tremendous effort from every member of the Zoona family: our customers, employees, board members, investors, partners, and colleagues. <br />
<br />
However, despite this progress we have much more work to do to achieve our vision of a world of Cashless Growing Businesses…everywhere! I am reminded of my favorite quote from the late, great Nelson Mandela:<br />“After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.”<br /><br />I see three hills on the horizon for Zoona in 2014. First, we have much work to do in Zambia to fully integrate Airtel Money into our agent service offering. We want to activate 1 million Airtel Money mobile wallet users, and provide a guaranteed “cash in / out” service to these customers. This will involve scaling up our agent network significantly to meet the anticipated demand. <br />
<br />Second, we want to further scale our payment and working capital services to Zambian Breweries’ cross-country network of beverage distributors and the 25,000 small retailers below them. Our vision is to create a completely cashless distribution channel in Zambia as a proof of concept that we can scale to other value chains elsewhere. <br />
<br />Third, we are now looking beyond Zambia and a key priority for 2014 will be to test our model in new markets. Our dream has always been to build a pan-African business, and it is time to make this a reality.<br />
<br />As much as I am looking forward to a break after an exhausting year, I am more excited than ever to get back to work in January. The Zoona story is just getting started, and 2014 is going to be a big test to see if we can elevate our business to the next level. <br />
<br />Thanks to everyone for your continued support and I wish you all the happiest of holidays. <br /><br />
Best, <br /><br />Mike Quinn <br />
Group CEO , Zoona<br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Follow me on Twitter at @<a href="https://twitter.com/ZoonaMike" target="_blank">ZoonaMike</a></span>Zoonahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305643332602605550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-48491074269343511142013-06-11T05:39:00.001-07:002013-06-12T00:34:33.069-07:00Zoona Launches Micro-Entrepreneurs on Kiva<style>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Growing a business is
hard in Africa. Trust me, I have experienced this first hand as CEO of Zoona
over the past 4 years (<a href="http://www.zoona.co.za/content/documents/Mikes%20Mobile%20Transactions%20Story.pdf">Mike’s
Story</a>). There are the day-to-day challenges that businesses everywhere have
to go through – acquiring and retaining customers, hiring good people, managing
a cash flow, and positioning against competitors. But in Africa, raising
finance is a particularly hard challenge to overcome, especially for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">micro-entrepreneurs</i>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="background-color: white;">Take <a href="http://www.kiva.org/lend/563693" target="_blank">Cosmas</a> for example</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>a Zoona micro-entrepreneur who is in
the business of distributing Coca-Cola products into the informal market
settlements of Ndola, Zambia’s third largest city. In addition to supporting
his family and sending his children to school, his business provides a source
of recurring income to the 150 informal retailers that he supplies daily. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Cosmas’ biggest problem
is accessing growth finance to increase his turnover because his profit margins
are very small. He cannot access a bank loan because of the strict collateral
requirements, and his business cannot sustain more successful microfinance
loans because of the high interest (typically 42% pa in Zambia). His best
alternative is to simply not grow and leave his dreams unfulfilled. As an
entrepreneur, I can tell you there is no worse feeling. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">This is why Zoona is so
excited to be the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">first mobile payments
partner of Kiva</i>. Kiva’s mission is to create opportunities for people like
Cosmas around the world by connecting him to a pool of lenders. Kiva raises over
$1.5m per week for micro-entrepreneurs like Cosmas, which changes their lives.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Right now, Kiva has a
promotion where first time lenders can make a FREE $25 loan to a Kiva borrower.
A Kiva donor funds the loan. All you need to do is to accept my personal <a href="http://www.kiva.org/invitedby/mike65013335" target="_blank">invitation</a>. </span></div>
<a href="http://www.kiva.org/invitedby/mike65013335"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"></span></a><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Then, you can click this
<a href="http://www.kiva.org/lend?partner_id=210&status=fundRaising&sortBy=Most+Recent#/?partners%5B%5D=210&sortBy=expiringSoon" target="_blank">link</a> to search for the Zoona micro-entrepreneurs that are fundraising:</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_841459280"><br /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">And don’t stop with the
first loan – you’ll find a continuous stream of Zoona micro-entrepreneurs
looking for finance to help grow their business. These micro-entrepreneurs are
the real deal, and we at Zoona are committed to do everything we can to unlock
their growth potential and achieve their goals. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">See you on Kiva!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Best, </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br />
Mike Quinn</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">CEO, Zoona</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Follow me on Twitter at @<a href="https://twitter.com/ZoonaMike" target="_blank">ZoonaMike</a></span></div>
Zoonahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305643332602605550noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-81820718263109213402013-01-04T22:47:00.001-08:002013-01-05T07:57:34.634-08:00Time to Break Out<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">2012 was an amazing year for Zoona. It started
with us closing what was Zambia’s <a href="http://www.zoona.co.za/default.asp?id=39" target="_blank">first ever venture capital investment as a technology start-up</a></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><a href="http://www.zoona.co.za/default.asp?id=39" target="_blank">.</a> This was no small feat for a company that
started in 2008 with a late night text message from Brad to Brett Magrath about
an idea to bring mobile payments to the masses in Africa. <a href="http://www.zoona.co.za/default.asp?id=34" target="_blank">It felt like we had been fighting a trenchwar ever since, and finally had the breakthrough we needed.</a></span><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: right 415.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">But the investment
was somewhat of a false dawn. As exhilarating, as it was to <i>finally</i> look at a cash flow forecast
that didn’t plummet into the red at the end of the month, we didn’t fully
appreciate how much of a hole we would have to dig out of before we could
really start to grow. Our operational systems and processes were held together
with duct tape and glue and it quickly became apparent they couldn’t scale. We
had a dozen key hires to make, which would take months of interviewing, onboarding,
and integrating into our existing teams. We had to set-up two Boards for our
international and Zambian entities, which involved building new working
relationships, getting used to new governance processes, and recruiting new independent
Directors. We also had a backlog of pre-investment external development
contracts to deliver on before we could even start to think about developing
new products and executing our strategy for the future. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: right 415.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: right 415.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">We were, as we
liked to put it, <i>constipated</i>. Our
business could not move forward until we could relieve the backlog and establish
new foundations for growth. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: right 415.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The problem was that it took us a few months to
figure this out. As a CEO who had spent nearly 18-months fundraising, I was the
furthest away from the actual business on the ground; I didn’t recognize how
constipated we were. I wrongly assumed that with the money in the bank the plan
would play out like we had designed many months earlier and I had pitched
repeatedly to investors. Our new investors naturally assumed the same, setting
the stage for some difficult months of missed targets, misaligned expectations,
and worst of all, an increasing cash burn. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: right 415.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: right 415.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Note to first-time
CEOs who successfully complete a fundraising round: <i>Don’t underestimate how much time it will take you and your team to
really learn your business again once the money is in the bank.</i> <i>It’s a big transition from a pre-investment
cash strapped start-up to the business in your investment plan, and your goal
should be to make this transition as quickly as possible without burning
through your hard-earned investment cash.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: right 415.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">When we did get real about relieving our
constipation in Q3, we took the first steps towards becoming a much better
business and more effective management team. We set a list of operational priorities,
none of which were related to revenue: We completed our hiring and onboarding,
rolled out our new Zoona brand, restructured our agent operations, automated
manual payment processes, and put in place new controls. We also spent a lot of
time figuring out how to get the right people focused on the right things – which
became my biggest priority in my role as CEO. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">While this transformation is still not complete
and we have had to endure some staff turnover, the results started to come in
Q4:</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Helvetica; text-indent: -18pt;">We achieved
our first $200k revenue month</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Helvetica; text-indent: -18pt;">We grew our
Money Transfer revenue by 38% in Q4 versus Q3, with our biggest day ever on Christmas Eve (3,000 money transfers valued at close to $200k)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Helvetica; text-indent: -18pt;">We launched
a new Supplier Payment product from a cold start in August to close to $1m in
payment value in December</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">These achievements have built some real momentum
and have increased our intensity as a team. They have also enabled us to become
much more focused on four key goals for 2013:</span><br />
<b style="text-indent: -18pt;"><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span></i></b>
<b style="text-indent: -18pt;"><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">1.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">
</span></span></i></b><b style="text-indent: -18pt;"><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Become
cash flow positive.</span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Working for a start-up is
a life and death battle every day until we can generate positive cash flow and regain
control of our own destiny. In 2013, we need to grow revenue as quickly as
possible <i>without</i> increasing expenses.</span><br />
<b style="text-indent: -18pt;"><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span></i></b>
<b style="text-indent: -18pt;"><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">2.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">
</span></span></i></b><b style="text-indent: -18pt;"><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Focus
our resources on our core customers.</span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Getting more focused on
paper is only the first step – the real challenge is ensuring that the bulk of
our people and resources are allocated to serving our most important customers.
In 2013, we need to have the courage and discipline to say “No” at least as
much as we say “Yes”.</span><br />
<b style="text-indent: -18pt;"><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span></i></b>
<b style="text-indent: -18pt;"><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">3.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">
</span></span></i></b><b style="text-indent: -18pt;"><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Enable our
employees to drive a delightful customer experience.</span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">We will only become the business we want to be by
developing a customer-centric culture. In 2013, we need <i>every</i> single employee at Zoona to understand how his or her
day-to-day job touches – and delights – our core customers.</span><br />
<b style="text-indent: -18pt;"><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span></i></b>
<b style="text-indent: -18pt;"><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">4.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">
</span></span></i></b><b style="text-indent: -18pt;"><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Establish
a data-driven culture and decision-making framework.</span></i></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Finally, our business has grown to the point where gut-feel decisions are no longer
good enough. In 2013, we need to complete the automation of business
intelligence data and dashboards so that managers have the right information at
their fingertips and make better decisions everyday.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Everyone at Zoona has a part to play to achieve
these goals. As one of our <a href="http://www.zoona.co.za/default.asp?id=36" target="_blank">core beliefs </a></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">states:</span><br />
<b><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span></i></b>
<b><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">We believe in performance.</span></i></b><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> We
will build a high-performing team with diverse backgrounds and skill-sets and
hold them accountable for results.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">This belief in performance starts and ends with
me as CEO. I am accountable for ensuring these goals are met, and for leading
Zoona closer to our vision of a <i>Cashless
Africa.</i> Despite the hype around mobile payments, Africa is still dominated
by cash, unbanked masses, and usury interest rates (for those “lucky” enough
who have access to financial services at all). The market opportunity is bigger
than ever, and the need for Zoona’s innovative payment solutions has never been
greater. After a year of progress in 2012, we now have the team in place, the
money in the bank, a solid base of customers and agents, and a strategy that
can win. And best of all, we aren’t constipated anymore. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Welcome 2013. It’s time to break out. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Best,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Mike<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Follow
me on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/ZoonaMike" target="_blank">@ZoonaMike</a></span></i></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Zoonahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305643332602605550noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-7791577097147040402012-10-21T23:55:00.001-07:002012-10-21T23:55:16.922-07:00Inhabiting Planet ZoonaAn organization is a collection of people working together towards a shared goal.
<br />
<br />
It sounds simple, doesn’t it? But building an effective organization with capable, motivated people working together in unison is incredibly hard.
<br />
<br />
This has been our biggest challenge at Zoona since closing our <a href="http://www.zoona.co.za/default.asp?id=39">Series A investment</a> in February this year. Since then, we have grown from 28 to 49 people
across our Lusaka and Cape Town offices. This has come with its growing pains, as the new mix with the old and everyone is forced to adapt to a rapid pace
of change.
<br />
<br />
But it has also come with a tremendous input of energy. To name but a few of our newest inhabitants of <em>Planet Zoona</em>:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.lelemba.com/">Lelemba</a> is our very own Financial DIVA. A Zambian now living in Cape Town, Lelemba has jumped into the Financial Controller role feet first. She is always
on the lookout for opportunities to leverage her background in financial education to empower our Zambian staff and maximize employee experience for
everyone.</li>
<li>John is our new System Architect. He practices mixed martial arts in between work and family time, and isn’t afraid to hand out push-ups if any of our IT
developers go over their 30 second allocation in their daily stand-up meeting! We’re still waiting to see what he’ll do if someone doesn’t document their
code properly.</li>
<li>Marian is our Consumer Payments Manager. Having moved to Zambia from Cape Town, she is applying her extensive mobile media and consumer experience to drive
transaction growth through our agent channel. She also lives on a game farm outside of Lusaka with wild animals.</li>
<li>Randall is a Jamaican living in Zambia who has made it his personal mission to vault our Enterprise Payments product line to the top of our revenue mix.
He’s so focused on this goal that it’s not uncommon to receive work emails at 3am from him while he’s on leave (shh just don’t tell his wife!).</li>
<li>Oliver is our new Zambia Operations Manager. He After his first day of work I asked how he was doing and he simply said: “I have to be here.” Since then,
he’s “been here” 110% and has now added Customer Care to his list of management responsibilities.</li>
</ul>
<br />
I could go on and on about what I believe is a truly special team we are assembling at Zoona. What has inspired me about this group is how motivated
everyone is to play a leading role in Africa’s economic rise. Everyone is genuinely bought in to our vision of a <em>Cashless Africa</em>, and we aren’t
going to quit until we get there.
<br />
<br />
<i>This post was written by Mike Quinn, CEO at Zoona</i>Zoonahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305643332602605550noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-82975177267170501302012-07-25T07:18:00.001-07:002012-07-25T07:23:12.817-07:00Introducing Zoona!<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNEuiulAvyNsqj9WEdTQghxBeH-ou1moIM_2jSgjN4OwvwsDH1a_-8Zd8OdJIegMps9AZOTNw8yZALK7X7dpMcIYLsuRvXPfXwxjpgEgMQXi8z1QXu-sVKevZQrrv_ngUewl9B__77tvM/s1600/PastedGraphic-2.png"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNEuiulAvyNsqj9WEdTQghxBeH-ou1moIM_2jSgjN4OwvwsDH1a_-8Zd8OdJIegMps9AZOTNw8yZALK7X7dpMcIYLsuRvXPfXwxjpgEgMQXi8z1QXu-sVKevZQrrv_ngUewl9B__77tvM/s400/PastedGraphic-2.png" /></a></div>
<br />
Following the close of our recent <a href="http://www.zoona.co.za/default.asp?id=39">investment</a>, we asked our staff and customers what they thought of our name and brand. Here is what we heard:<br />
<div>
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">"I thought your name was MTZL; or was it MTZ?" </span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">"I just call you 'Mobile' because 'Transactions' is too hard to say" </span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">"Are you the green guys?" Sometimes being a successful business means listening to feedback, even when it means changing your name! </span></li>
</ul>
We are therefore rebranding under the name of Zoona (pronounced Z-oh-na), which means, "It's real" in Nyanja, one of Zambia's major languages. We have a brand new logo in our unique bright green representing growth for Africa, our customers, and ourselves. And we are more committed than ever to make transacting in Africa Easy Quick Safe for our customers. <br />
<br />
But a brand is much more than a name and logo. As my mother once told me, "It's what's inside that really counts." The true Zoona brand is represented by the following core beliefs that guide our actions and keep us grounded: <br />
<br />
<b>We believe in finding solutions. </b>We proactively search within our target market for bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and processes that don't work where our technology solutions can create new ways of doing things for our customers.<br />
<div>
<br />
<b>We believe in traction by action.</b> We are not afraid to take calculated risks to test new ideas, and we will systematically learn from our experiences. </div>
<div>
<br />
<b>We believe in working with change-makers. </b>We want to work with disruptive and innovative people and organisations who will adopt and adapt technology solutions to their problems. </div>
<div>
<br />
<b>We believe in getting it right. </b>Our customers must understand what we're offering them and we must consistently deliver on our commitments through effective and efficient structures and processes. </div>
<div>
<br />
<b>We believe in scale. </b>We will develop technology solutions that enable our customers to scale, thereby making a positive contribution to Africa's economic growth. </div>
<div>
<br />
<b>We believe in people.</b> We understand that we will succeed or fail on our ability to find great customers and staff and keep them happy. We will achieve this by behaving with humility and operating with fairness and transparency. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We hope you like our new brand as much as we do! <br />
<br />
Best, <br />
Mike <br />
<br />
ps. Look for me on Twitter @ZoonaMike</div>
</div>Zoonahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305643332602605550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-45542587048478008792012-07-09T10:41:00.000-07:002012-07-10T00:36:51.995-07:00Using eVouchers to Change Behaviour in Rural Zambia<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwVIlVQK3fstkR_ve8byS9bWstHYhjQliy0fWXAWryEe4nhHLfAn2lkr1ccyAi6vUFTbnFYxp5HLuDUxYqfybLpOfDch8SEpoliqeJVLk36_7yVXVF67rk0OfzE0AhRhXoMi5Vm6QRTDA/s1600/Family.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwVIlVQK3fstkR_ve8byS9bWstHYhjQliy0fWXAWryEe4nhHLfAn2lkr1ccyAi6vUFTbnFYxp5HLuDUxYqfybLpOfDch8SEpoliqeJVLk36_7yVXVF67rk0OfzE0AhRhXoMi5Vm6QRTDA/s320/Family.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
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<br />
Imagine yourself as a smallholder cotton farmer in rural Zambia. For many months, you and your entire family are out at the crack of dawn toiling on your farm - ploughing, planting, and weeding by hand to nurture a handful of seeds into a thriving crop of cotton. You are proud of what you have achieved with nothing more than your bare hands, a primitive set of tools, and if you are lucky, an oxen.<br />
<br />
And then comes payday. Finally, after all that laborious work, your crop is sold for hard cash. Everyone in your community is upbeat and happy. There are festivals and celebrations. Houses are repaired and thatched roofs are replaced by corrugated iron. New TVs and mobile phones beam airwaves in and out of the village.<br />
<br />
But almost as fast as this “enlightening”, your long lost relatives and less fortunate neighbours show up at your doorstep asking for money. They have watched you tend your crop from the first seedlings. They know the exact size of your harvest by the number of bags of cotton stacked outside your mud hut, and have easily and accurately calculated the amount of cash you received for your burden.<br />
<br />
They are begging you for help because they are “not as lucky as you.” You know you have only one choice – to help them by giving them money – or risk a bad reputation in your community and shame from your extended family. You reluctantly dish out your hard earned cash, knowing full well that some of it will end up being spent at the local bar. You know in your gut that many of the people you are “helping” will be back on your doorstep at the same time next year.<br />
<br />
Mobile Transactions has a vision to change this very real story that is a hindrance to the economic development of rural African communities. We have launched an innovative pilot project, in partnership with Dunavant Cotton and a local NGO called Musika, to test whether smallholder farmers will opt to receive eVoucher scratch cards instead of cash for their cotton crop.<br />
<br />
eVouchers allow farmers to store electronic value instead of cash. Each eVoucher is linked to a farmer’s unique ID number so that it can’t be used by anyone else, and there is no requirement for farmers to memorize a personal PIN (which is a significant barrier for financial services). In fact, farmers don’t even need to have mobile phones! eVouchers can then be redeemed for goods at local retailers, who are willing to offer discounts to attract customers and win sales from their competitors.<br />
<br />
If this pilot works, there could be a significant benefit to Dunavant, which pays out tens of millions of dollars in cash to over 150,000 smallholder cotton farmers in Zambia. This is both operationally expensive and extremely risky. If we can prove that farmers will accept eVouchers instead of cash, Dunavant is ready and willing to take this solution to scale and take a step towards becoming a Cashless Corporation.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIujBZsvaVXMRcxmDM5PpiAT8m69Vfab1yupR5tgMIfXeaKljlIiZDNWtO1nLKEOupLT0InBmAjUTHC1pM0YU9R98KcoH8_dAML0KZNKuKh9k_2H6zkVfyH4NESJ1HSfXMvkCKx-VzWIM/s1600/Donovan+Abhishank.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIujBZsvaVXMRcxmDM5PpiAT8m69Vfab1yupR5tgMIfXeaKljlIiZDNWtO1nLKEOupLT0InBmAjUTHC1pM0YU9R98KcoH8_dAML0KZNKuKh9k_2H6zkVfyH4NESJ1HSfXMvkCKx-VzWIM/s320/Donovan+Abhishank.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
<br />
<div style="font-size: 12.499999046325684px; text-align: left;">
Donovan Nickel (Board member) and Abishank Jajur (Accion intern)</div>
<div style="font-size: 12.499999046325684px; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<br />
I had the privilege of visiting some Dunavant farmers near a town called Monze with Hans Hesse (eVoucher Manager), Donovan Nickel (Board Member), and Abishank Jajur (Accion intern). It’s always a treat to get out of the office and into the field, and this was a humbling experience. This year, the world market price for cotton has dropped to half of what it was last year and farmers are facing a tough year ahead with a shock to their expected income. Despite this, the farmers I spoke with were optimistic about eVouchers. When I asked one lead farmer whether he was planning on taking an eVoucher, he replied:<br />
<b>“I will take an eVoucher because when my relatives come asking for money after I sell my crop, I can tell them I don’t have any.”</b><br />
<br />
Behaviour change in rural Africa is a hard and slow process. But I left Monze energized that we are onto something that could improve the lives of productive farmers who are leaders in their communities. Now it’s time to get to work and make it happen.<br />
<div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.499999046325684px;"> Left Mike Quinn (CEO) centre Hans Hesse (eVoucher Manager)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
By Mike Quinn<br />
CEO of Mobile Transactions<br />
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</div>Zoonahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305643332602605550noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-33544024021968570852012-06-04T01:49:00.000-07:002012-06-04T01:49:10.533-07:00Bringing billion dollar success strategies to Zambia<b>Mike Quinn reports on his and Brett Magrath’s recent visit to San Francisco to meet Mobile Transactions’ investors and supporters.</b><br />
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<br />
One of the great benefits of having the <a href="http://www.omidyar.com/">Omidyar Network</a> (ON) as an investor in your business is that you are invited to the annual <a href="http://www.omidyar.com/about_us/news/2012/05/08/omidyar-network-executive-forum-2012">Omidyar Network Executive Forum</a> (ONEF). ON is the brainchild of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam - it is an impact investment firm dedicated to harnessing the power of markets to create opportunity for people to improve their lives. ON believes that human capital can be as valuable as financial capital in helping organizations grow and increase their impact and therefore it helps its investee companies in strengthening their skills in key areas such as strategy, leadership and operations.<br />
<br />
From the 8-10 May Brett and I joined around 120 top executives from ON funded companies around the world for the 3 day event in San Francisco for keynotes, workshops, peer learning, practice-area networking, one-on-ones and small-group coaching. Not only did we meet and exchange ideas and experiences with other growing companies but we also had the chance to learn from people who ‘have been there done that’ and in the process changed the way we live our lives. We are so flattered that ON, by choosing to invest in Mobile Transactions, thought we were ready to join this group of amazing people.<br />
<br />
There are so many highlights from the meeting it is difficult to chose which to write about but in addition to meeting with Pierre Omidyar, founder of the Network, two particularly stand out.<br />
<br />
Reid Hoffman talked about Driving Innovation: how to exploit risks to achieve “breakout opportunities”. The secret is to choose the right risks! He also stressed how important people are to an organization, that companies need to identify and hire people who possess what he calls an “infinite learning curve”, people who continue to learn and ask questions throughout their career that can scale with a rapidly growing organisation.<br />
<br />
Reid has a truly awesome track record in business, he was a member of the board of directors at the founding of PayPal and later he co-founded LinkedIn. LinkedIn currently has over 135 million members in over 200 countries: at its IPO in May 2011 it was valued at over $3 billion US dollars.<br />
<br />
One of the most memorable events was the keynote from Julie Hanna, Chair of the Board of Kiva. Julie is an accomplished entrepreneur repeatedly building successful consumer internet and business software companies. She is driven by her belief in technology as a democratizing force for social, political and business disruption and in entrepreneurship as the world's greatest change agent. Julie has helped make Kiva, one of our partners, a TIME Top 50 Website and the world's largest micro-lending marketplace for poverty alleviation. <br />
<br />
Julie’s talk Bringing Humanity to Business was truly inspiring especially as by sharing her own story of being a refugee in America she challenged commonly held perceptions, “viewing people through the eyes of pity is dangerous because it wreaks of a stench of superiority.” I have to say that I completely agree with her. There are many complicated forces that keep people in poverty but I believe the best way to help disadvantaged people break-out of this trap is to unlock their potential by exposing them to opportunities.<br />
<br />
Our final day in the US was used to meet old and new friends. We made a presentation at the Kiva offices and were able to share directly with each other our excitement of <a href="http://www.kiva.org/lend?partner_id=210&status=All&sortBy=Most+Recent">the success Mobile Transactions’ Agents are having in raising funds through Kiva</a> (over $120,000 in Kiva loans to date!). <br />
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We also met with Patrick Pichette, CFO of Google and early supporter of Mobile Transactions, and had the opportunity to visit the Google campus. There he showed us some of their new technologies, including a Google Near-Field-Communication (NFC) chip in a phone that enables payments to be made by just swiping an Android phone on a point-of-sale device. Brett and I responded by showing Patrick our e-voucher scratch card, which does the exact same thing by storing value for retail purchases but only costs a few cents to the consumer and can be redeemed using even the most basic SMS/voice phone. I think we were mutually blown away by each other’s technology, and it was great to see how similar we were thinking but for very different market segments.<br />
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However different our environment is to Google’s, Patrick laid down a challenge to us in how we should think about building our business. He said Google evaluates new ideas based on two criteria: 1) Can it reach a billion users? (or else what’s the point?) and 2) Can technology change people’s lives? His challenge was that we should evaluate our opportunities in the same way as Google does. There are approximately four billion underbanked and underconnected people in the world who could use Mobile Transactions’ products. It was great to hear such positive affirmation in our model and approach, and the test is now whether we are up to the challenge. I think we are.<br />
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<i>This post was written by Mike Quinn and edited by Jill Kent</i>Zoonahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305643332602605550noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-74244260194194718072012-05-13T00:28:00.001-07:002012-06-04T02:04:24.522-07:00Brad and Brett Magrath recognized as leaders in AfricaEach year, the <a href="http://www.africanleadershipnetwork.com/">African Leadership Network</a> (ALN) scours the continent in search of a new generation of leaders for Africa: leaders who despite their relatively young age have tremendous influence and are thus uniquely positioned to play a role in taking Africa to a new era of prosperity.<br />
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Brad and Brett Magrath have been recognized as “New Generation Leaders for Africa” for 2012 and have been invited to join the ALN. They were chosen out of several thousand candidates and will be joining 200-300 of the "the most significant 'new generation' decision-makers on the African continent".<br />
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"Congratulations on this tremendous achievement. It is a testimony to all you have done so far and recognition of your potential to do more to drive Africa forward," said Fred Swaniker, co-founder of the ALN.<br />
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Brad and Brett are one of three individuals chosen from Zambia out of the 100+ individuals invited to join the network in 2012.<br />
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The ALN is the premier network of young, dynamic, and influential leaders in business, public sector, the arts and civil society in Africa. Their aim is to engage the collective influence of this new generation of leaders to drive prosperity for Africa’s people. Partners include MTN, JP Morgan, and McKinsey & Company.<br />
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At the same time, Brett Magrath has been recognized by The Economist Intelligence Unit as a contributor to their report on <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/Management-Thinking/corporate-cios-in-emerging-markets-an-evolving-role">"Corporate CIOs in Emerging Markets: An Evolving Role"</a>. He was one of 366 senior executives surveyed in Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa and 10 who were interviewed in depth. The report highlights the growing importance of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) role in ensuring profitability and growth of companies in emerging markets where ‘the effective use of IT can help catapult a company from small local player to international competitor.<br />
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Congrats to both Brad and Brett!Zoonahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305643332602605550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-25161595523420833922012-05-05T23:52:00.001-07:002012-05-06T00:04:14.675-07:00Onto the Next Hill<b>“After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.”</b><br />
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This is a famous quote by one of the world’s greatest human beings, Nelson Mandela. I can’t think of anything that is more relevant to our business right now.<br />
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On Februrary 10, 2012, Mobile Transactions closed a $4m Series A investment round. It was a lot harder and took a lot longer than we originally thought, but as the first ever technology start-up in Zambia to close international venture capital financing, this was truly a great hill to climb (you can read our full investment story <a href="http://www.mtzl.net/content/documents/Mikes%20Mobile%20Transactions%20Story.pdf">here</a>). We’re immensely proud of this achievement and have some great new shareholders, including Omidyar Network, Accion Frontiers, and MEDA. We also have the foundations of a great board of directors, including Arjuna Costa (Omidyar), Monica Brand and her alternate Michael Murai (Accion), and Donovan Nickel (MEDA’s board observer).<br />
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But as Nelson Mandela wisely warned, we have only made it to the base camp of Mount Everest. Our vision is a <b>Cashless Africa. </b>Our goal is to build a <b>billion dollar pan-African payments business</b>. Raising $4m seems miniscule compared to these challenges.<br />
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So how do we get there? <br />
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It all starts with our team. Teams are simply collections of individuals through which the output of the whole is greater than the output of the sum of the parts. We’ve got a good team right now, but we need to add the missing pieces and develop our talent to make it a GREAT team. This won’t happen automatically – it will take a lot of hard work by everyone and there will be casualties along the way. But for those who rise to the challenge, there will be a stream of opportunities and rewards.<br />
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Next come our customers. In a start-up business, customers are like a good mechanic in Zambia: they are hard to find but once you do you don’t let them go. Customers pay our wages, test our products, and when we get it right, they do our sales and marketing for us. This is why we have made <b>“Delight our Customers”</b> a key strategic objective of our business, supported by our new Customer Experience department. This department is tasked with listening to and learning from our customers to understand what they love, hate, and desire from us so that we can continuously improve.<br />
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Third, we must evolve our products and services with a focus on achieving SCALE. In the short term, this means investing in our technology to develop a scalable platform, expanding our cash agent network in Zambia to lead the market with our Consumer and Agent Payments product lines, and taking our eVoucher Payments product line across Southern Africa. Looking out into the future, we want to open our platform to connect with third parties to accelerate the volume of transactions and push the boundaries of payment innovation in Africa.<br />
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There are still many more hills before we reach the summit, but if we get these three things right I have no doubt we will get there.<br />
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<i>This post was written by Mike Quinn, CEO of Mobile Transactions</i>Zoonahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305643332602605550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-54406010664932215562012-05-02T00:04:00.005-07:002012-05-06T00:08:31.429-07:00Get Stupid! - Investment Celebration Party South Africa.Let me start this off by quoting Brett: “Never, in all my years of being in this business, did I ever think Id witness something like that”.<br />
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Those sentiments are shared. By just about everyone I would think.<br />
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I witnessed some astounding feats last night, who knew ZOONA employees were so talented with an invisible ball?? Grahams invisible card pack not withstanding!<br />
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It such a great feeling knowing that you work with people you can just get stupid with!<br />
From Lelemba and Thulasy’s Adele WINNING idols audition, to how Leshain “rolls” to Brett the IT gangsta, last night was just a bag of fun and then some.<br />
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Getting to see everyone in their element and just out of their work shells was priceless. One actually realises that outside work we are completely different people and that there are some lasting friendships to be built within Zoona.<br />
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To me personally, interacting with everyone on such a social, non-professional platform was awesome. One realises how much you actually have in common with the people you work with, which in turn, makes for a better working relationship.<br />
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I mean, did you ever thing you would see something like this?<br />
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I didn't think so......<br />
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This little piece just serves to say thank you to everyone who made last night possible!<br />
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Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to socialise with and get to know each other better. For allowing us to just get stupid and have enough fun to motivate us for a long time coming!<br />
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<i>This post was written by Jade September, on the Payment Processing team in Cape Town</i>Zoonahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305643332602605550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-19629810409345611682012-03-19T07:48:00.006-07:002012-05-06T00:11:37.973-07:00Making a difference behind a screenHello everyone,<br />
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So I think I will just get the formalities out of the way before I jump into this.<br />
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My name is Jade September, I am not the newest addition to the accounting team. However, my start with Mobile Transactions is a fairly recent one. The newest addition would be Ragmat Davids, although I am sure many of you would have seen our names pop up in your email inbox's often enough to get annoyed at the pair of us and to realise that we are the newest employees at the Cape Town offices.<br />
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It would seem my experience thus far matters, which is awesome. That being said, one conversation flowed into another and it was decided that I should write a blog post.<br />
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Since by nature, I am an honest person, I will say that I hate finance. I just happen to be good at it. Weird isn’t it? However, when I heard word of an employment opportunity here, I thought “Why not? It is not where I would like to be but it is a change” and was it ever.<br />
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My first week here must have been one of the most stressful experiences I have ever had, but I can honestly say that I have come to love the company and the things they are involved in. I am living the brand, so to speak.<br />
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The vision of this company is so inspiring, that when my family and friends ask me where I work now, they need to prepare for a very lengthy explanation ranging from what I do, to my place in the bigger scheme of things. I love the fact that I can come to work and actually feel like I am making a difference in the world. One reads the blog posts and watches the Kiva videos and everything suddenly comes together very nicely. You realise that even though it might not seem that way, you are helping people and improving their standard of living. Isn't that in itself something to be largely content with?<br />
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Okay I can feel myself running away with this, so onto the next topic. <b>The People.</b><br />
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I love the people I work with. In Cape Town, we have the accounting department and the I.T department. Two separate departments, one vision.<br />
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I don’t feel like I am in an accounting box and that’s it. I don’t feel any divide between the two departments, everyone is treated the same and all issues and queries affect us all. Everyone is extremely willing to help where they can and it’s awesome.<br />
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We have Lelemba, the resident Chartered Accountant and Queen Diva. I still can’t get over how down to earth and friendly this woman is. It’s a joy to be working alongside her and I intend to take in as much as I can.<br />
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Then we have Leshain, The internal auditor and fellow Diva extradonaire. One of the most helpful and friendly women I have ever met. It’s like she comes with her own sun. She is just warm and positive all the time. I don’t think I have ever seen her upset, even when the newbies mess up.<br />
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Amid all the females, we have Charlton. I think the guys in Zambia should start keeping Charlton company during the day because the dude is really starting to feel the lack of testosterone now gents, he can only be around the I.T dudes for so long before he has to come back over to accounts and feel that overwhelming surge of power infused oestrogen all around him.<br />
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Then there’s Marissa, my fellow vivacious Diva and friend. Working with her is an absolute joy. I am extremely proud of her and in awe of how much she, alongside Leshain, accomplishes on a daily basis and I am sure many of the people in the Zambian office can vouch for that.<br />
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Then we have Ragmat, the newest employee in Cape Town. So far, I have enjoyed working with her. We talk, we joke, we laugh and we work. What more could I ask for from the girl who sits next to me?<br />
We also have Keith, our Chief Finance Officer. Another person who amazes me with how down to earth and helpful he is. I am not afraid to strike up a conversation with him or to joke with him because that is just the type of person he is. There is a time for work and all the time in between is to joke with everyone here, especially Brett. Just listening to Keith and Brett on a daily basis has to put a smile on your dial.<br />
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In my head, generally I.T people are stuck up and snobbish and unwilling to assist with anything. Was I in for culture shock when I got to Mobile Transactions. Never in my entire 23 years of existence have I come across Nerds (don’t even deny it guys) who laugh so much and are capable of talking so much smack!! They make the day fly by and I can never understand how Brett is able to get them to be serious! Though, one tends to understand when they listen to Brett where it all comes from. Yet The system keeps evolving.<br />
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Hopefully this little post gives everyone some insight as to what goes through my head on a daily basis.<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div>Zoonahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305643332602605550noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4574182856061994051.post-76445260805840147112012-03-14T07:54:00.002-07:002012-03-14T07:57:12.094-07:00Making a Difference in MicrofinanceIt is often said that if more women are empowered with financial assistance in the poorest and remotest areas of the world it would have a huge significance in the uplifting of living conditions for women, men and children alike.<br /><br />Mobile Transactions is working with Vision Fund Zambia, commonly known as “Harmos”, a wholly owned subsidiary of World Vision International. Vision Fund has a Mission to economically empower the poor to improve their livelihood and become productive members and advocates for positive change in the society, through sustainable microfinance services such as business loans, agriculture loans, bicycle loans and youth loans.<br /><br />My name is Brenner Nkunta; I am currently as the acting Vision Fund Account Manager (our regular manager is on maternity leave – congratulations!!!). I am the link between the Vision Fund head office in Lusaka, the Mobile Transactions Zambia (MTZ) Champion Agents around Zambia and MTZ Accounts Department in Cape Town.<br /><br />Vision Fund gives empowerment loans in 15 districts of Zambia with 80% of the loans targeted to women. To be eligible for a loan, one has to be running a business. Most loan recipients have small grocery shops commonly known as “Tuntembas” while others have small scale farming holdings. To identify the loan recipients, Vision Fund field officers physically inspect the settlements of the target clients and make suitable recommendations.<br /><br />Vision Fund makes use of the MTZ Agent Network, which is spread across Zambia deliver loans to the recipients. Once Vision Fund identifies loan beneficiaries, the details are entered into the MTZ microfinance payments system. Upon approval, the loan recipient receives an SMS to go and collect money at the MTZ agent’s shop near them. In a month Vision Fund approves over 1,000 loans worth around $400,000, which are then disbursed through the MTZ system. Loan recipients are also able to repay their loans through the same MTZ agents.<br /><br />My job as Account Manager is to ensure that a loan recipient, once approved, will be able to receive their cash at their local MTZ agent. I communicate closely with the Vision Fund team, the MTZ accounts team, and monitor the MTZ system to ensure that agents will have the necessary liquidity to make the pay-outs. The feedback we hear from the loan recipients is that they appreciate that the agents are close to where they live and the pay-outs are faster than the previous manual system that was employed by Vision Fund.<br /><br />One of the most noticeable success stories is that of the MTZ Champion agent in Maamba located in the Southern Province of Zambia. The agent was set up to meet the needs of the Vision Fund loan clients in the area. The agent caters to loan clients that come from as far as 20Km away from the agent location in Maamba town.<br /><br />A few of the key challenges faced by Vision Fund include the low level of literacy of their clients and the distance they must travel to reach the pay-out/pay-in locations. We’re working closely with Vision Fund to ensure that their loan officers are able to educate their clients about their role and how the system works. We are also working to expand the agent network to reach out to new areas, previously never served by any financial services. Our agent in Maamba, a rural community to Southern Zambia, was set up primarily to service these loan recipients and offer our other money transfer services. Before this agent, loan recipients would have to travel around 90km to access their loans.<br /><br />MTZ Champion Agents operate as independent entrepreneurs. Mobile Transactions is working in partnership with Kiva to provide additional working capital to these entrepreneurs to better serve loan recipients and others across Zambia. To check out the profile of some of these entrepreneurs, check out the Kiva website: <a href="http://www.kiva.org/partners/210">http://www.kiva.org/partners/210</a>.Zoonahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14305643332602605550noreply@blogger.com284