Afrigather Noel Okay. Tshiani, founding father of Congo Enterprise Community, speaks with Christian Kamwina, founding father of Ndonge, on this unique interview for TechCabal about his debut into the startup area in Kinshasa.
Inform us about your skilled background and what excites you most about your profession proper now.
I’m a 30 year-old Congolese entrepreneur working within the digital know-how sector. I began my major research within the metropolis of Kinshasa (the place I used to be born), notably at Mokili Mwinda faculty complicated, then did my secondary faculty at Bonsomi Faculty and scientific humanities at Abbé Loya Faculty the place I obtained my highschool diploma.
Simply after acquiring my diploma, I joined medical faculty on the Protestant College in Congo, the place I accomplished my coaching within the third 12 months of my doctorate. It was throughout my educational coaching in 2019 that I began the mission Ndonge which is able to change into the startup I’m presently main. Ndonge means termite in Lingala and it’s a platform that brings collectively actors who’re within the distribution of phone credit within the Democratic Republic of Congo. Our platform offers providers that facilitate monetary inclusion and entry to telecommunications instruments via revolutionary and inexpensive applied sciences to our clients.
What excites me in my profession proper now’s the totally different sectors that our firm can tackle. Certainly, it is extremely straightforward for us to combine totally different new applied sciences and to work on totally different IT instruments with out altering our fundamental service, which is able to truly be boosted by the enlargement of our actions. That’s why I’m nonetheless very keen about growing Ndonge as a result of I do know that even though it presently has over 20,000 customers, it’s nonetheless in its infancy.
Are you able to inform us the story of how your startup was created? What impressed you to create your organization?
As for my journey in creating Ndonge, it began in March 2013 when, due to my mom’s funding, I used to be capable of open a retailer promoting phone credit. As a medical scholar, I couldn’t handle gross sales concurrently my research as a result of lessons required necessary attendance day-after-day from morning to night.
So I needed to rent somebody to handle promoting, and I needed to handle supplying the phone credit. Having employed an worker, I needed to hold common accounts and handle the shop from a distance so as to guarantee continuity on the one hand. And then again, I needed to rush throughout break on the college to go to the provider to position orders by depositing the cash. Generally I bought by borrowing and I needed to settle my money owed earlier than the provider’s closing time of 4 pm.
It was subsequently an ideal issue to maneuver that day-after-day. As well as, typically the provider forgot to ship the phone credit or made a mistake. So I needed to guarantee that issues have been going properly on the college, on the provider facet and on the retailer. And so the difficulties of managing time, accounting, sources (human, materials and digital) and managing the enterprise pushed me to think about a pc system that brings collectively all of the performance in order that I might handle all the things remotely, even when I used to be within the auditorium following the lectures.
The preliminary concept was that the software program ought to solely be used for my retailer. It was after having understood that a number of different retailer homeowners promoting phone credit have been confronted with the identical issues as me that I made a decision to rework this software program into an interactive platform serving anybody wishing to purchase phone credit both for their very own communication or to resell to others. That is how Ndonge was born in 2019, due to the contribution of Justin Mwanza on the software program improvement facet.
What challenges have you ever confronted all through the launch and progress of what you are promoting in Kinshasa? How did you overcome these challenges?
The delivery of Ndonge was adopted by many difficulties because it was the primary platform of its sort in Congo. We needed to face a number of challenges, together with the difference of our platform to the true wants of our goal customers. We needed to make Ndonge as straightforward as attainable to make use of, whether or not it was for ordering phone credit or for stock administration, so as to keep away from a battle between the standard system of supplying credit and our new, basically digital system.
Sellers of phone credit are very time-sensitive clients. They like a time-efficient system and this was the most important problem to beat. The second problem was the fee technique for use for the provision. As a result of the resellers make money deposits to position their orders, a bodily presence was required to pay for the merchandise. Telecommunications networks don’t permit for cellular cash brokers to ship cash to one another without charge.
It was subsequently tough for us to persuade resellers to make use of our system with out dropping cash. And the final problem was and nonetheless is that of mobilizing capital to energy the service. The distribution of phone credit is a extremely demanded exercise in Congo, whether or not by corporations, resellers or finish shoppers. We, subsequently, wanted to have adequate funds to serve our clients. These are the foremost challenges we’ve been dealing with and we’re working every day with the only real goal of constructing our platform the hub of phone unit distribution in Congo.
The whole lot has been progressing properly since our launch as a result of we’ve change into extra mature in controlling the components that may result in loss inside the firm first, and we’ve put in place two advertising and marketing approaches which are working completely properly with resellers who’re web savvy and people who desire to work together with Ndonge by way of a set agent.
These approaches are presently permitting us to realize exponential gross sales as extra resellers be a part of our platform. The problem of fee strategies has been overcome by establishing collectors who acquire cash from resellers, whereas different resellers use financial institution transfers and different fee strategies with out charges to position orders straight on Ndonge. Cell cash stays the perfect fee technique for the resellers of phone credit to position orders on our platform from their factors of sale as a result of cellular cash is a part of their enterprise in addition to the resale of phone credit.
How does your organization differ out of your opponents, particularly telecommunications corporations resembling Airtel, Vodacom or Orange? What distinctive worth proposition do you provide to your clients in order that they don’t purchase straight from telecommunications corporations?
After working on this sector since 2013 on a private foundation and since 2019 as a startup, we’ve not but discovered any construction or firm that approaches the notion of distribution of phone credit in Congo as we do. Due to this fact, we don’t but have opponents with a enterprise mannequin like ours.
Nevertheless, we see many companions such because the Regulatory Authority of the Publish and Telecommunications, telecommunications corporations, distribution of phone credit, even telephone cubicles and finish shoppers. In truth, these operators can do their enterprise on our platform with out negatively impacting our personal enterprise. Quite the opposite, their presence can be an added worth for Ndonge by way of profitability and enlargement.
Nevertheless, a number of the corporations that present phone credit that we’ve listed solely goal one class of consumers and that’s most frequently the top shoppers. These shoppers prime up their accounts with telephone credit whether or not they’re financial institution clients, microfinance companies or cellular cash clients. However, our platform targets all of the gamers on this market whereas holding in thoughts that almost all of the Congolese inhabitants is unbanked, doesn’t have a cellular cash account and doesn’t undergo microfinance companies.
Which means the biggest share of the phone credit distribution market is held by resellers who serve finish shoppers within the suburbs. And that’s the market that Ndonge is addressing, that’s our distinctive worth proposition. We’re a market and the very first in Congo that particularly targets the distribution of phone credit for all gamers. That’s, suppliers, shoppers, and regulators.
Do you intend to introduce new services or products into the market sooner or later, based mostly on the alternatives you presently see in Kinshasa?
Within the coming years, we plan to assault different provinces in Congo and broaden our platform throughout the complete African continent. The benefit that Africa has within the provide of phone credit is that the logic is identical in all places. Which means the success that Ndonge has achieved in Kinshasa would be the similar in any African nation the place it’s established.
Our staff can also be engaged on the mixing of sensible contracts (important elements of blockchain) so as to automate the processes of steadiness verification, order compliance, funds, and phone credit supply. We’re additionally engaged on the opportunity of introducing synthetic intelligence as a buyer assistant so as to reply to buyer issues 24 hours a day in addition to buyer identification know-how throughout the KYC (Know Your Buyer) course of.
We additionally plan to work with the regulatory authorities such because the Central Financial institution of Congo and the Ministry of Digital Affairs within the elaboration of texts for the creation of frameworks that promote the emergence of digital and monetary applied sciences resembling blockchain, synthetic intelligence, metaverse, internet 3, gaming, NFTs, social networks, and large information.
Congo and Africa have a really younger inhabitants. And they’re absorbing superior digital applied sciences way more simply and rapidly. Issues are shifting so quick that it might be clever to create frameworks that encourage entrepreneurial initiatives by younger folks reasonably than stifle them.
