Navida Natural Foods founders Daniel Mwai and Mette Larsel show some of their products during the interview with the Business Daily at the Nairobi International Trade Fair last week. Salaton Njau
By David Mugun
It is now a common news item, to learn about two organisations teaming up to create a bigger market platform for goods or services. This phenomenon is referred to as convergence.
In Kenya, technology and branch networks are proving to be the key drivers of convergence. The government through regulatory agencies is the enabler of innovations emanating from such joint ventures.
Let us learn from those who have done it, then later learn what it takes to get into a convergence relationship.
Let us begin with examples of technology driven convergence products and their resultant benefits to the organisations in question and the buying public.
Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) teamed up with telco giant Safaricom to launch the M-Shwari banking product that has proved popular with phone users.
On its own, CBA hardly had 40,000 account holders before launching the innovation. Today, we know that it has more than two million account holders in the wake of M-Shwari.
Safaricom has provided a convenient platform to its subscribers and the results are nothing less than astonishing. Because CBA plans to venture into 10 African countries, it needed to be reasonably big at home so that it gets benchmarked favourably in its chosen continental markets.
Technology has proven to be the game changer in its expansion quest.
Insurance companies amongst them UAP and Pan Africa, have also linked up with telcos to reach wider populations of customers in a convenient manner.
On its own, insurance is a difficult sale and trusted platforms make it easier to sell insurance services. The traditional insurance salesman has been scandalised for long and here again, technology seems to be bringing much needed relief.
M-Pesa, the innovative payment solution with world acclaim, has enabled every business to have a safe way to pay for goods and services in Kenya and abroad. A lot has been written about this and many readers have experienced the power of this platform so we need not to say much.
Amazon bookstore has made it easier for books to be purchased conveniently. For authors such as myself, I am able to avoid upfront costs associated with traditional book publishing because, my books on sale at Amazon, are only printed on demand.
A customer goes online to order and it is the buyer’s money that is used to print and ship the end product. This has made publishing the affordable venture that has encouraged me to write my third book, which will soon be out.
My initial experiences with local publishers were bad and many others are moving on to safer platforms such as Amazon that provide royalties three times more than our local publishers and with no hassles.
The Android technology, has allowed the development of many innovative applications that are commercially viable through Android driven gadgets. This technology is affordable and widely in use and hence its preferred status as a convergence platform.
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