Safaricom’s Nairobi-based Alpha creation incubator might have an capricious future, according to sources.
With dual high-level departures, and a flitting of Safaricom’s CEO Bob Collymore, there are questions on how or if Alpha will continue to operate.
The space was determined in 2017 to coax new product growth for Safaricom, that is Kenya’s largest mobile user and a provider of M-Pesa — East Africa’s many used mobile-money product.
As TechCrunch reported, one of a initial objectives of Alpha was to build on a success of M-Pesa.
As a telco, Safaricom has 69% of a Kenya’s mobile subscribers and generates around one-fourth ($531 million) of a ≈ $2.2 billion annual revenues (2018) from M-Pesa. The fintech product has 20.5 million business opposite a network of 176,000 agents.
While these stats have put Safaricom in a desired position, a company’s former CEO Bob Collymore voiced concerns over a risk of too many eggs in one basket. For years, Collymore pulpy his association to variegate product and income streams.
Through in-house growth and partnerships, Safaricom combined to a mobile and fintech network consumer and tiny business-based products, such as ride-hail app Little and website services.
In 2017, Safaricom’s arch creation officer and initial conduct of Alpha, Kamal Bhattacharya, echoed Collymore’s goal to variegate a company’s offerings.
“We’d indeed like to pierce over M-Pesa by leveraging a energy as a amicable network to bond people to other product solutions,” he told TechCrunch.
Bhattacharya — who’d come to Safaricom after comparison positions during IBM Research Africa and a army restructuring Kenyan creation core iHub — recruited a group for Alpha, led by owner and mechanism scientist Shikoh Gitau.
From a marketplace perspective, Alpha was something to watch, as corporate incubators in Africa were (and continue to be) a comparatively new member opposite a continent’s tech ecosystem.
Alpha staff in 2018
In a space intentionally determined divided from Safaricom’s HQ, Alpha’s group of innovators set to moulding new digital offerings.
In 2018, a incubator rolled out a initial product, a amicable networking height called Bonga, to enlarge M-Pesa.
Safaricom rolls out Bonga amicable networking height to enlarge M-Pesa
Because M-Pesa was already determined as a blurb network, a thought was to amplify that by formulating some-more amicable media-type exchange around it — channeling Facebook, YouTube, iTunes, PayPal and eBay in one platform.
With Bonga, Alpha seemed to have some movement into 2018, before a creation incubator mislaid dual of a biggest backers.
First, Kamal Bhattacharya exited Safaricom and his position of lead of Alpha in Oct 2018. The reason given by a association was a bit of corporate say-nothing-speak: “leaving to pursue other interests.”
The genuine reasons for Bhattacharya’s remarkable exit were unclear. There was, however, copiousness of hearsay about powers within Safaricom — resistant to a code of bureaucracy rattling change Alpha could move — conspiring to pull him out.
After losing a head, Alpha mislaid another pivotal fan in Bob Collymore when he upheld divided in Jul of this year after a quarrel with cancer.
Alpha pronounced farewell to another comparison figure in Aug when Huston Malande left. It also rebranded Bonga to Zwuup this year — yet Safaricom’s final dual annual reports don’t prove how a product has fared underneath possibly name, with no discuss of Bonga, Zwuup or Alpha.
What’s subsequent for Alpha?
Several sources tighten to Safaricom (speaking on background) voiced doubt that it would have a support within a association to continue after Collymore’s passing.
One source suggested Alpha would some-more expected be morphed into a incomparable Safaricom bureaucracy rather than close down completely, to equivocate disastrous news that an sudden closure would bring.
TechCrunch asked Safaricom directly on a destiny of Alpha, and privately if it would endorse or repudiate reports a creation incubator could close down. A Safaricom orator pronounced it could not criticism on anything associated to Alpha’s products or opening before Safaricom’s subsequent gain reporting, scheduled for Nov 1.
So Kenya’s tech village will have to wait a integrate some-more weeks to see if Safaricom sticks to a examination to coax inside creation by formulating an outward incubator — or not.
