MTech Communications: Leading Mobile Content and Media Interactivity Provider

Interview with William Warero, Account Manager at MTech Communications

What is your assessment of the data communications services sector in Kenya?

The best way to assess the data communications solutions sector is by looking at the statistics from the market. The latest survey by the Communication Authority of Kenya shows a huge decline in the consumption of SMS services, with a decrease of about 20 percent in the last quarter. This can be attributed to the consumption of web and digital services such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and other top service providers. The same trend can be seen in the broadcast sector with the consumption of media through Netflix, YouTube and similar services that are continuing to expand their numbers. We are seeing a very interesting trend in the market now which is separate from the shift from 4G to 5G systems in terms of infrastructure. On the service side, there are many consumer trends towards consumption of digital media. All of these trends have greatly changed the landscape. There are a lot of new players in the field, which requires new adjustments in terms of the job market, traditional media services and traditional service provision. It is a very vibrant sector and there are great opportunities, particularly in our region.

MTech Communications group was founded in Nigeria in 2001 and has now become Africa’s leading mobile content and media interactivity provider. Could you give us an overview of the company’s history?

We want to have technology solutions that provide the most significant assistance to our audiences by providing the broadest spectrum of services in the most meaningful way.

MTech was founded on the basis of providing innovative consumer facing products for the mass market. We want to be able to provide communications solutions that the largest number of people can have access to, and also to provide a meaningful impact to both corporate entities and individuals. Even from our inception in 2001, the founders of this organization saw that there was a trend towards a unified globe in terms of communications solutions. They began a plan to connect all African nations and to establish multi-regional interaction for communications solutions. The operation acts as a single entity across the whole of Africa. We are not public facing. We are more about stronger interrelationships with media agencies, infrastructure providers and telecom providers, and a high level of customer service on these three layers. We have achieved a replicable business model that translates across different countries. We are in 16 African countries and growing. We ensure that there is value for our partnerships and the things we engage in. We rely on strategic values and partnerships and strong media partnerships as well as commitment service provision. We want to have technology solutions that provide the most significant assistance to our audiences by providing the broadest spectrum of services in the most meaningful way. We have also optimized our technology and infrastructure. We have three main technology hubs located in Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana. All of these instances are data replicated as well as on the Cloud. We have been running on Amazon web services from the beginning. We try to stay on the cutting edge of technology solutions. That way, we ensure that our global customers who have a pan-African approach and intend to look at the region as one singular market are getting the level of service they expect and are used to in their own markets. Our core values are building trust, innovative solutions, being responsive, sustaining key and strategic relationships, strategic aggregation and symbiotic media partnerships. The first three tiers are about the customers. We ensure that we build trust. By that, we “super serve” our customers and ensure that they really trust how we are putting together their systems. That involves interpreting how we serve them, being able to admit when we are not capable, and finding a different solution from what the customer initially expected when we must. The second is innovative solutions which is core in the technology market as it is right now. And the last is, of course, being responsive. We have very high level sellers on each of our services so we do not intend to ever have a situation where a customer will go unsupported, no matter what line of business they are in. The next three values are about our relationships in the market and the business ecosystem. People tend to imagine concepts, ideas, or methods of technology appearing in isolation. But there is an ecosystem to the market that means you have to have a balance as you interact with different players. Your partnerships and relationships with suppliers and your partners have to be key. They have to trust you, your payment cycle, how you operate with them, and your credibility with how you engage with the government. This ensures you are at par with what the industry is saying about you. On the flip side, strategic aggregation involves how we engage with Tier 1 global companies in different sectors and their expectation on global standards. Internally, we benchmark our services on open standards as a bare minimum on best practice. This is not just a blanket approach using the standard that exists on the market. We homogenize these ideas into what can work in each of our various ecosystems and provide that to our clients. Strategic media deals with how people approach media and distribution of digital communications. How do we get people to be the first online? The global trend is that people still turn towards media companies first. If you want to reach one million people, the first person you contact is a traditional television station. That might not be true in the next two or three years. Many global journalistic companies are trying to reinvent themselves as digital companies. We took a different perspective by providing the enabling environment and the platforms for organizations to work with their own internal digital strategy to suit their customers. That is generally how we have decided to face the market and it is working well for us thus far.

MTech Communications group provides services to the Mobile Network Operators, Government Agencies and companies, from conceptualization to development. These services include digital content distribution, mobile applications development, content aggregation, subscription-based services, mobile marketing, etc. Could you give us an overview of the company’s main areas of business?

We define ourselves as an integrated communications services provider. Technology currently changes so fast that what may be considered the best way of doing something now may not be the same a year from now. As an integrated communications services provider with the basic intent of reaching the widest audience possible, we benchmark off of infrastructure providers. For any of the different organizational sectors that we participate in, the possibilities are only limited by the infrastructure that is available. As a base currently regulated by the industry, we work in the voice, messaging and video tiers, as well as two way communications solutions both automated from systems. So if you have an enterprise planning system that needs to automate the system messaging or how alerts are pushed out to people in different ways, the medium does not matter. It is about the infrastructure. We do not limit ourselves in terms of the technology. It is about whatever medium our clients choose to use across the infrastructure available at that time. We have found that regulations are usually far behind technology. Our limitations are only the current infrastructure capabilities of the country and the regulatory environment. Technology is never hindered, it is always light years ahead.

What can you do to overcome these challenges?

We try to be very forward thinking concerning regulations and policies. We interface frequently with our license and infrastructure providers and bring proposals for more valuable policies and services that they can avail to us, especially as is driven and demanded by the market. In some instances, of course, some interests supersede others. But over time, as they respond to the needs of the market and the demands of suppliers such as ourselves, they tend to change.

What are some of MTech’s most significant success stories?

MTech is a pan-African company and there have been many firsts. We were involved in the first mobile banking app with Citizen Bank in 2001, the first major messaging mega promotion using SMS campaigns for FMCG sectors, and we were the first to work with TelCorp on messaging campaign promotions. Nokia Life was an important experience. In 2003, we provided an embedded mobile application solution on dumb phones that was then deployed across Africa. The Nokia Life services enable people to subscribe to and interface with the pricing of agricultural artifacts, food, healthcare and lifestyle. Currently, in the digital age, people are accessing all this information on data, but we were at the forefront of access through dumb phones. We actually set the pace, in partnership with Nokia, to bring to the public an understanding that it is possible for people to have a near real time response with people who are hundreds and thousands of kilometers away and getting the actual value of anything you have to sell, trade or interact with in different regions of Africa. We are continuing to do this and have currently started running healthcare projects with similar like-minded global individuals and entities that are running pan-African healthcare services on dumb phones. People are beginning to see the importance of SMS in terms of its value and quick impact on the general public. During the most recent coup in Turkey, it was reported that an SMS actually saved the incumbent president. He sent a bulk SMS to the entire populace to rise up against the military. That really places an immediate and clear value for what a regular 160 character text can do when put to appropriate use. We are still trying to find ways to ensure that the masses who may not have access to top tier technology are enabled with services and products while they keep scaling up until they have equal technology.

MTech has operations in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, Rwanda, Swaziland, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana. How would you define your strategy in terms of expansion plans?

Our primary focus is service delivery. We want to help our customers save money, make money and solve problems. If it is an organization looking for a better way to reach the public because they are spending too much in advertising and they need to find better ways to communicate, we are there to support that. If there are opportunities to work with product campaigns and promotions to enhance and stimulate the market and buy more product in the mass market, we are there as well. We are also there to solve big problems in healthcare and pricing communication at the base of the pyramid. Our endgame is to have a direct presence and connectivity with all of our infrastructure providers throughout Africa. When you look at the sheer size of Africa, most people do not realize that you can fit the entire US inside a space from only the western region to the Sahara. There is so much more that needs to be covered. From that perspective, the continent of Africa has so much to offer within itself. This is especially true with infrastructure opportunities. The big goal for us is to really clinch and cover. We are very focused on strategic partnerships and we will never thank our partners enough for allowing us to be at the forefront of technology. Our R&D activities are rigorous and we always try to stay at the cutting edge. There is so much happening in machine learning, solar energy and the technological world. We are at the point where we are going to be talking a lot about ethical standards of certain technologies. One of the greater challenges is how we will be able to establish homogenized best practices around emerging technologies.

Are you looking for any type of partners or investors?

We are open to investors. We approach our interaction with investors as if they are partners. We look at opportunities and define exactly what each partner is bringing to the table. We tell them what we are doing, what we are capable of, where we are and where we are headed. We try to find what areas they can fit into and what we are equally bringing to the table to move forward. It is all about the attraction we have built and the new opportunities and directions we should be going in. We have a gap and how can we mutually benefit from assisting with this gap in an ethical manner that ensures we are not damaging the value and values of the people.

Does MTech Communications group do any type of actions in terms of CSR?

CSR is an underlying structure of our services. Our services are already friendly to the public. For example, when providing healthcare services to our non-governmental partners and even to our commercial partners, we ensure that the pricing of our products is not prohibitive to the end user. Whether it is healthcare that someone is consuming, educational products, or pure entertainment, the backbone of it is ethical business. It is a better approach to CSR. You do not take and then suddenly start giving. You should ensure from the first instance that your ecosystem supports what people are working on. In terms of direct initiatives, we have worked a lot with the Save the Forest Foundation. The base chapter of the initiative is the reforestation of the water towers of Kenya. When people talk about these kinds of solutions, it seems like much has been taken and afterwards they are trying to give back. We want to take part in these activities every day by ensuring that even in what we are supplying, our solutions are not damaging the environment or the lives of people.

What is your vision for the future of the company? What would you like to have achieved in the next 5 years?

Our goal for how the company functions is to ensure that we are embedded in the financial services sector. There is a digital convergence in services and products and infrastructure happening now. There are lots of interesting buzzwords in terms of where money is going to be and going to go in the next five years. We have to be there in advance. In Africa, there is a lot happening with mobile money and we have to be there as well. Our focus is our reach over the masses. Every day we try to develop new partnerships in every tier, with infrastructure, media and service provisions. Our endgame is to be a global communications provider with direct service availability in every instance that we or our customers intend to reach out on. We intend to always stay at the crest of any financial services or infrastructural technology sector. In doing so, we do not want to limit the growth of the company to a certain technology platform because there are many new trends and ways of interfacing technology. We have always been at the forefront of cutting edge technologies. We had the first mobile banking app in Nigeria in 2001. We have a lot of new firsts lined up in this market and Africa as a whole. Just watch out for us and you will see us. MTech also handles content aggregation services. We have a platform with an integrational difference system of human resources and software that allows us to manage digital rights for our content services. This includes music, jokes, audio clips and video content. We currently have the largest catalogue in Africa with over 2,000 artists signed from all the biggest names in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Zambia all the way to South Africa. We have local artists too. We put this content together on our digital platforms directly partnered with network operators. We supply the content and can enable an unknown artist in rural Kenya or rural Ghana or Zambia to receive value for their content and allow people to pay to consume that content. This is quite similar to an iTunes platform. In the cities you are able to access everything from a data platform. In an ecosystem where data is not at the top you have to have different methods and innovative ways for people to access and pay for content. Our mobile networks in these different countries have put that together, allowing people to have ring back tones, different ways of dialing in and listening to content and automated dial services where the system calls out to the end user. These are different variations of similar systems, but in this case you are working with the smallest amount of bandwidth but still allowing people to consume and enjoy the services. Part of the growth and interface and changes will go into the digital platforms because that is where everything is heading, but we have to start where the ecosystem currently is. There is a lot happening concerning regulations and rights and managing of all this content. We are glad to be one of the prime players in this sector.