Monthly Archives: September 2009

Skunkworks: Nairobi September 29

The latest Skunkworks was held on September 29 2009 at Teleposta Towers Nairobi. The focus of the tech group this week was on Tech & Entrepreneurship and four speakers were chosen to provide their insight on the new business models they are developing in Kenya. This comes at a time when the fibre cable initially considered the greatest thing since sliced bread has become a corporate product with targets to break-even before cheap internet costs can be passed on. The fibre is just one arm, so it was good to hear techpreneurs talk not just about revolutionary business but grappling and scaling numerous challenges of running such businesses in this part of Africa – i.e. business registration, financing, staffing, patenting, winning contracts, succeeding and making money

skunkworks panel


full disclosure – I correspond with Liko, drink with Kahenya and Joshua arranges some advertising at this site

1. Liko Agosta – Founder and CEO of Verviant a leading web developing firm and BPO provider talked about:
Startup financing: He started his company with savings, then family & friends, and finally banks
company strengths: include having a good team (20 staff in Kenya), good track record (measured by repeat business they get), interacting with customers, good customer service (including fixing up products for their customers that other companies had previously messed up)
customers: – have contracts with companies in the USA, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, and South Africa
– show companies how they can save money e.g. Africa online, akamba, instead of having staffed offices all around t company waiting for people to bring them money, have a platform that does this cheaper
watch cash – many business fail because they are under-capitalized, entrepreneurs should save money and keep costs low because it can sometimes take many months for them to get paid
– advises tech companies to focus on mid size products and contracts; this is because cash flow kills many Kenyan companies and this is likely to happen when if serving large contracts whose payments are spaced out
new product: pesapal will allow Kenyans to pay online via mpesa or zap for products and services from vetted merchants. It will also store transaction details details for 7 years, and comes with a readily available API, and pre-built components. More details on pesapal availed at verviant site on October 2.

2. Caroline Juma is the managing director of KCR – which stands for Kenya computer resources. She talked about her company which does human resources for IT professionals exclusively.
education or experience don’t always matter: while some companies ask for job candidates with advanced degrees or who have several years experience to fill positions, she sometimes finds that the best person may be one who is still in school, or who does not have the work experience. She looks at what they have done; KCR can test/examine what their skills are and will vouch for them to companies to employ them as IT professionals. IT professionals should show initiative, and work on projects that will enhance their career prospects not just learn outdated VB in university
don’t wait for governments: Kenya is not known for IT and call centers will not save the day. People should stop waiting for the government to do things in outsourcing, fibre etc. But governments don’t do that they only crate policy.
KCR is free IT professionals can place their CV’s with KCR for free, there is no charge, unlike with other placement companies
IT conference upcoming KCR will be involved in an Aitech conference in November in Nairobi on business match-making

3. Kahenya Kamunyu – CEO, ViRN Instruments. Involved with Zuqka, previously worked for BT, Yahoo, Sanyo Business, and Sony Playstation. Currently developing smart ideas and providing Venture Capital to small enterprises. Kahenya has been coding since he was 13 years old and gave a talk on his entrepreneurship and employment history from South Africa, UK, Japan and finally in Kenya, and the lessons he has picked up along the way:

boot-strap: be frugal, pay bills, and put whatever cash is left aback in the business. Businesses that are under-capitalized and will fail
More education produces bad developers! college kids write better program than senior engineer with degrees; his is because kids write code without rules, while company programmers can only write within the parameters/box set by the company
business is fun
what?! if you’re single you’ll never make money – get a wife/husband.
have a wish list: these targets let you know where you are going and give you targets to work for
look after your health don’t over-work yourself or get tired. Work smarter
give back to community: tithe, get involved in non-profits, help others – this is because what goes around comes around, and you may be the one in need of a helping hand next time
debt is bad: do not start a business when in debt, you will go deeper into debt and have to sell off assets
on partnerships: set the rules before you go into partnerships
Kenya is not friendly to start-ups it is very hard to start a business and expensive. It would also be nice if there were incentives for local companies. E.g. Vodacom in South Africa has a super low tariff for start-up businesses that use their products, why not Safaricom? Also banks are not friendly in lending to star-ups.
banking secret you can use a patent to get a bank loan
small is better many entrepreneurs chase one big multi year contract, but it is better to serve several small contracts. The big contract may pay one, and replace you with someone cheaper, while the small ones, diversify the risk, provide for better cash flow, and the happy customers whose expectations are easier to meet, will grow and stay your loyal customers of many years big fish =small fry, small fish= big fry
high tech not the answer many young people go into high tech industry because its the in-thing, cool, sexy now, but internet has expiry date, while people will always eat food.its unfortunate some entrepreneurs are too proud to go into mundane (non-tech) industries that are more sustainable in the long run-
Kenyans should invest in R&D talk to customers, observe competitors. Many Kenyan companies don’t do this and fail owing to bad idea/false assumptions i.e. build it and they will come.

4. Joshua Wanyama: Founder and CEO of Pamoja Media, and a TED fellow, helps companies strategize their online presence to make money.
company strategies (i) interactive strategy (ii) creative development (iii) media buying & placements online
niche is getting companies aiming to advertise to Africans e.g western union
understand marketing: easy to get a meeting in Kenya, much harder in the US
keep learning: learn through reading, searching online & in libraries, networking, associating with smart people. He has learnt more about business from reading after his education
use web tools: he runs a web based company that has several components – all online including e-mail, ad server, sales leads, finance (payroll) and project management> can this also be retransferred to a farmer or fisherman?
opportunities Kenya
– include online services, e-commerce, procurement and local content
– It’s time to walk the talk in Africa; in a country like Kenya only 20% of the top 100 sites ranked by alexa for Kenya are Kenyan companies. We need to retain more people within our domain, and keep traffic generated within Kenya
– thanks to m-pesa’s success, it’s now easier for Kenyan mobile development companies to get funding from abroad
– Mentioned other companies doing exciting things online including: Preciss,
Ushahidi, Verviant, Nyeri Online, Jumuika and Mama Mikes
keys to success for Kenyans online
– tell our success stories better
– Ease the way of doing business: it has taken him several months to register his business in Kenya as well as to open a bank account for the company in Kenya. There seem to be difficulties for companies that have overseas-based directors or partners, and he has only been able to open an account with the help of a lawyer
– Cultivate a culture of entrepreneurship. Financing entrepreneurs is risky business the world over with expectations that 40% of business will fail, 40% will break even and 20% will bring in rewards
– companies should do R&D and follow through on these because one year from now the company or its products may not be relevant

Kenya Airways 2009 AGM

Kenya Airways (KQ) is the cradle of blogging for me – one of their annual general meeting’s (AGM) is the place it all started, the place where the inspiration for blogging, since then it’s been a ritual to attend because I like planes and investments similarly. This year’s AGM, held on September 25, was the first I’ve attended at Kasarani sports gymnasium; previous ones were at their Embakasi HQ, Carnivore and Bomas grounds.

What was remarkable or noteworthy?

shareholders aplenty KQ always draws in shareholders, maybe its because they are rather generous with gifts a.k.a SWAG (more on that later); but the meeting hall is full of the whole rainbow of Kenyan shareholders from business peoples, to student types (perhaps sent as proxies), but mainly older people who perhaps bought shares as far back as the IPO in 1997.

KQ courtesy shames Safaricom a few weeks ago Safaricom held a no-frills AGM that did away with many of the niceties that shareholders are used to. KQ, showed they this was no a costly affair to gold; they had shuttle buses from town to ferry shareholders to and from the meeting and also gave out lunch boxes to all shareholders. The AGM did not have the usual red t-shirt that shareholders are used to, but coming on the back of Safaricom, many were satisfied.

in the meeting – CEO Titus Naikuni talked about the tough year the airline had from the credit crunch, which affected travel budgets and the price of fuel, which escalated during the year.

– Fuel hedging: FD Alex Mbugua tried to explain the subject of fuel hedging, something he said even many accountants don’t understand, but which had left the company with a 5.6 billion loss. The company was able to manage an operating profit of 4 billion ($52 million) before hedging kicked in, even though the price of fuel had gone up to Kshs. 24.5 billion representing 35% of their total costs.
– For the last 5 years they have engaged in fuel hedging, this worked in their favour till 2008 – when with oil looking to zoom past $200 they locked in some contracts, only for the price to nose dive to $40. Overall, in the five years the gains remain a positive Kshs. 516 million.

In response to shareholder questions, he also said: 
– KQ board is reviewing hedging policy, and this is through the committee of the board
– some hedging parties have been reluctant to enter into contracts with KQ of late, and insist on some cash cover
– while they could not comment on recent prices they have hedged, some to 2011, he mentioned the numbers have swung in their way as at August and they may have a write back in profits this year when they brief investors in October 2009.

Shareholder questions (with answers)
– how will they control costs? Careful choice of routes, try and expand those that work, drop those that don’t. African routes account for almost 1/2 their revenue now.
– Why did employees strike? There were conflicting unions representing employees, and during labour talks, the employees went on an illegal strike as they demanded untenable wage increments. Management was able to come to an agreement with the help of COTU and is looking to learn from mistakes it may have made to avoid this again
– Why is the company’s Secretary (CS) not an employee? The Company did a cost-benefit analysis and decided to outsource the function. The CS is still Fiona Fox and she assured shareholders that she responds to all letters written to her; most of which relate to registrar matters
– Where are reports of KQ accidents in Ivory Coast and Cameroon? CEO said investigator reports are still being done by these countries authorities, and they don’t have the former, while the latter has not been released KQ so can’t comment on it. On the Cameroon crash, KQ and insurers had made a settlement with 90 of the 105 passengers, but some relatives have chosen to sue the airline or the aircraft manufacturer (i.e. Boeing)
– Why did the annual report come out just 3 weeks to AGM? Management said they would try and improve and not just comply with the legal minimum for listed companies
– Why not use Precision Air aircraft (a Tanzanian airline in which KQ owns 49%) to fly to Kisumu since they have no more turbo-props for short runway? The repairs at Kisumu are short term did not warrant a fleet change, and will resume flying there with their Embraer 170’s when repairs are done
– Do they plan to fly to the USA? KQ has never said they would fly to US; they have good partnerships and networks (KLM) through which they get feeds from US already, and JKIA will have to make some modifications before they can fly to US.

source: airliners.net

– What will be done about Boeing 787 which they have ordered but us yet to fly? KQ are talking to Airbus and Boeing about getting some replacement aircraft (won’t be brand new) but a decision will be made in a few months.
– One shareholder asked why managers /directors interest are divergent from KQ i.e. directors own few shares, while executive directors compensation is a significant part of employee compensation: The Chairman said buying KQ shares was a personal decision of directors and he himself bought his shares at the time of IPO when he was not even a director of KQ. The CEO said management has not had any salary increments despite what union said during the strike.

Minor #FAIL’s: – The company registrars who had dozens of computers to register shareholder before the meeting, but whose computers were not connected. Anyone could have walked in. They also ran out of ballot papers
– The gymnasium had no water (though understandable at this time of water rationing). It was also not suited to the meeting format; the directors sat so far as to be indistinguishable except on TV screens while poor microphones/acoustics of hall meant some questions/comments were not audible
– Shareholder elections; this year, there was only one independent candidate on the ballot I guess they have realized of the futility of this exercise – and the results out today show all the board nominated directors were unanimously re-elected.
– CDSC (the share people): had a tent outside to register any of the 78,000 shareholders of the company; but they didn’t just ask if you had immobilized your shares, they practically demanded you pass by their tent and register to receive statements by e-mail or SMS (do away with the postal service)

Goodies: – Dividend of 1 shilling ($0.013) per share despite the loss. shareholder’s register closed day of meeting and this will be paid after October 23
– Lunch box by Sarova with drinks (yoghurt, soda & water), meats (drum stick, beef sandwich, boiled egg), fruits (banana, apple), and bread.

10 Reasons You Lose Twitter Followers

While new media like twitter gets more popular each week in Kenya, I find myself adding more interesting friends, but only to unfollow some for different reasons. So I may have un-followed you recently because:

1. You send too many tweets in a few minutes, crowding my small nokia window; maybe you’re just in a foul mood, I may check and re-follow in a few days time
2. Too may re-tweets I want to know what you’re thinking, not just reading elsewhere
3. Your account has been taken over by a monster twitter e.g. wefollow mafiawars
4. Too many boring tweets (if you’ve nothing to say there’s no penalty for saying less)
5. Too many back & forth with another twitter who’s more interesting than you – one of you has to go you should take the argument sideways (chat, e-mail, DM)
6. You fit the profile of a stalker – you follow you follow Oprah, Ashton Kutcher and me and send me DM messages constantly
7. You take up a cause and hype it to death I may follow you after the cause/event/conference has passed
8. All activist, all the time #HIV #NGO #healtheworld #savethe kids #savethechimps
9. If you fit the profile of a spammer or send lethal links
10. u ryt gbrsh lk ths – there’s actually a proper abbreviations dictionary, but its’ much easier to just write complete words

So unlike with facebook, I can’t turn off your updates (or can I?) so I probably un-followed you for one of these reasons.

For Last Minute Kengen Bond Investors

There’s a nice travel site called Kenya last minute that caters to the last minute travel planners. Similarly, taking up last minute offers is a trend that also spreads to investing and there is a lot of interest now in the public infrastructure bond PIBO (not BIPO) on sale from the Kenya Electricity Generating Company (Kengen) that closes on September 29 and targets to raise almost $200 million in exchanges for paying investors 12.5% interest p.a.

Anyway, what’s the rush? We have had one month to make a decision that covers ten years! And if this was a share sale, we’d probably see queues of potential investors lined up around stockbrokers offices holding bits of paper, cheques, ID’s etc. at least one of whom would look into the TV cameras and say something like “serikali ingetuongezea sisi siku moja tu” (the government should add one more day for investors). The offer has not pulled queues to the street corners, but it’s excepted to achieve its goal, as targeted marketing and forums are being held around the country

So what is there to guide last-minute investors? Blogger Kainvestor has a nice PIBO summary derived from the information memorandum almost from the day it was released and there’s no need to repeat the good points he has noted there.

Good for retail: with an over-subscription expected, the resultant allocation is likely to favour retail investors. The minimum investment has been set at 100,000 ($1,315) which is the same as the recent Kenya government infrastructure bond that was aimed at raising 18 billion but yielded 26 billion. Then, and probably now, the allocation formula was skewed in favour of retail investor compared larger investors and institutions.

source: CBK infrastructure Bond performance report (PDF)

Bad for retail: liquidity in the secondary market for Kenyan corporate bonds is low; while the NSE twitter feed (@NSEKenya) notes that the bonds segment witnessed trades worth Kshs. 1.15 Billion (on September 24) which is an increase from Kshs. 80 million worth of bonds traded yesterday, this was all in the government bonds segment, while corporate bonds are rarely traded; those who buy them, rarely trade them, so if a retail investor is looking to cash out early, odds are not good.

Also, read another BIPO analysis from the Business Daily.

Week on Twitter: September 22

Another re-cap of a week full of Twitter – @bankelele posts which included issues like Olympia prepares for shareholders then postpone AGM, a skunkworks forum and a fibre summit are coming to Nairobi this week, but how is the fibre being used in government? There’s a new newspaper from the government of Kenya and a new magazine from EAM. Charterhouse bank may re-open while PTA bank has a silent bond, Kenya Airways flies to Ndola while Emirates air starts selling world cup 2010 packages, and finally twitter matures by enabling medical advice for Kahenya, drawing in the US ambassador to Kenya and also by helping Stanbic Bank improve customer service

– East Africa Fibre Summit – in Kenya next week http://www.aitecafrica.com/…
Emirates Air starts selling 2010 World Cup South Africa Packages http://tinyurl.com/pbj7e3 (where’s SAA, @kenyaairways, Ethiopian?)
New GoK newspaper title Kenya Today; first issue has bullet trains, Brigadier Ali, SMEs, Idi Amin, MJ, and rants about parliamentary dictatorship & NYTimes writers – all at a cost of Kshs 30/=
– @SupremeGREAM I’d be very surprised if Charterhouse Bank reopens. It will be like re-licensing Triton; @kachwanya is correct, something is smoking at Charterhouse http://bit.ly/3lk8d2
– R/T @kaboro Skunkworks Tech & Entrepreneur Forum, 29Sep Speakers: Liko Agosta, Verviant, Joshua Wanyama, Pamoja, Alex Gakuru.
– Help @kahenya with medical advice http://bit.ly/1YDJ3F #rhabdomyolysis
– @RookieKE CFA one very tough exam, it has driven some very bright professionals up the wall. CFA pass rates Level I: 46% Level II: 41% Level III: 49% @kainvestor http://tinyurl.com/mwegha i salute those who have tried it
– Tiomin say they have made progress with Canadian and Chinese investors on #kwale. Wait till they get to environment minister #michuki
– Kenya government has asked all ministries/agencies to email copies of procurement tenders – to be compiled at a portal http://www.tenders.go.ke/ ; also http://www.tandaa.co.ke/ which is “all about Kenyan content” has NO KENYAN CONTENT! Just Anheuser Busch, French news, love in Warsaw…
– @kenyaairways 44th destination launch flight lands in Ndola #Zambia http://bit.ly/hMFk5
– Barclays waives joining fee for gold (6K) & classic (3k) cards http://www.barclays.com/afr… #youllpaysomehow @coldtusker I have no credit card, I can usually tap family or friends #TIA
– R/t @joosi @davos World Economic Forum (WEF) to be in Tanzania May ’10. Nairobi star said Kofi Annan steered it away from Kenya’s bad leadership
–
#Newshot and #bullseye are not too funny: seems Marende may have banned use of parliamentary clips for satire. Did Njoki spell stakeholder as steakholder in her protest letter? #NTV
– Sunday nation writes about US ambassador on twitter @usamb4reform, but twitter yet to be taken up keenly in Kenya unlike facebook
– Nairobi water company appoints 4 debt collection agencies
– PTA Bank has a $21 million 14% bond in Uganda closing Oct 2. Pity they stopped updating their website http://www.ptabank.org
– New women’s magazine called Move out this week from EAM, costs just Kshs. 80 ($1) http://www.drum.co.ke/node/… was true love too pricey for the ladies?
– Twitter improves bank service R/T @coldtusker Thanks to @StandardBankGrp I got a call from CFCStanbic Kenya re: my problems at the bank
– R/t @kainvestor Kenya Ministry of Water office connected to fibre cable! But nobody knows what do with it…just watching movies online.

Olympia CEO comments South Africa has been a real challenge, but we still believe in the market M Matu http://tinyurl.com/klheg7 ; later Olympiacapital muddle continues, now AGM postponed to 2nd-oct cause delayed fin statement dispatch