I am feeling it right here – Ant Group, the Chinese “Amazon of Money”, will likely acquire Nigeria’s Interswitch next year. Interswitch has some great properties in Verve, and data, as the pioneer of the electronic payment sector in Nigeria.  While Ant Group (of Alipay) has tons of money to buy anything on its way – it just raised $34 billion, the largest IPO in the last few days – the company may not like to spend about $1 billion possible price tag on Interswitch. But it needs data, and for that, it will not give up.

In a record breaking move, Jack Ma’s Ant Group pulled off the biggest share sale in history, with a $34.1 billion Initial Public Offering (IPO), beating Saudi Aramco’s previous record of $29.4 billion.

The Ant Group has been in market news as it prepared to make its market debut. The regulatory filing released Monday showed the Chinese tech giant priced its dual listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Shanghai’s Star Market at 80 Hong Kong dollars ($10.32) and 68 yuan ($10.13) per share respectively.

The $34.1 billion IPO puts the company’s value at $310 billion. Ant’s decision to file its initial public offering with Shanghai and Hong Kong markets signals a looming boycott of US markets by Chinese firms. The Chinese government has recently been encouraging its companies to avoid US markets, following the economic and political tensions between the two countries that have put Chinese companies under serious scrutiny in America.

America had made it clear that the Ant Group cannot come to any party. A deal to buy MoneyGram by Ant was killed in 2019 by the US government. With Europe not offering friendly red carpets and the ambition of Ant so huge, a path through Nigeria becomes inevitable. 

Interswitch Verve is a great product and can be scaled all over Africa; Interswitch missed the opportunity as I explained in the monopoly hangover piece. No other sub-Saharan African company has that type of product. So, it is natural that Ant Financial will come for it. Verve offers it a promise to punt Visa and Mastercard; in 2019, Ant processed $18 trillion worth of transactions while the American duo pulled $16 trillion.

But assume that Interswitch is not possible, expect Flutterwave to be on the horizon. The interest in Ant Group’s IPO was so huge that the Hong Kong institutional book was “oversubscribed just one hour after the launch”. That is the level of success Ant has achieved. Interestingly, there is no company in the Western world that comes close to its scale; Ant is nearly 5x the value of Goldman Sachs! Justifying that confidence requires doing some global shopping. Expect Ant to play big in Africa – Interswitch and Flutterwave are my favorite targets.

The book was oversubscribed just one hour after the launch on Monday, two separate sources said, demonstrating investor frenzy for the initial public offering (IPO) of the Chinese fintech giant that has stoked heavy demand for cash and sent Hong Kong money market rates to five-month highs.

Ant Group declined to comment on the planned early closure of the Hong Kong institutional book.

It is looking to raise up to $34.4 billion in Hong Kong and Shanghai, with the offer split between the two cities, giving it a valuation of about $312 billion.

The Ant From Alibaba Beats Saudi Aramco, Raising $34b in World’s Largest IPO

How time flies – this was a company which was rumoured to be leaving Africa. Of course, Airtel had no other option than Africa as its home nation of India was under a redesign, with Jio changing the industry with market-shaping products and services. Across all metrics, Airtel had no chance in India! Having no alternative, Airtel retooled its business model, and became a quasi-financial institution which offers telecommunication services. Yes, Airtel outsourced some infrastructure components of its business, improving its CAPEX and by doing that, have money to invest on its customers. The result has been superb: Airtel has logged its 11th consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth, HI 2020 data shows.

Airtel Africa has logged its 11th consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth. In its H1 2020 financial report, Airtel Africa noted a 16.4% increase in revenue in the first half of its current financial year, and a 19.6% increase in Q2. The operator said mobile revenues increased 15.3% in H1 due to growth in voice and data, while its mobile money operation Airtel Money saw revenue growth of 30.4%.

Growth was recorded across all regions, with Nigeria up 20.2%, East Africa up 21.9% and Francophone Africa up 4.4%. Noting a growth of 12% across its customer base, Airtel Africa now counts 116.4 million customers across 14 markets, which span Eastern Africa, Francophone Africa and Nigeria.

In May 2018, I explained why Airtel Nigeria would continue to grow: asset-light business model where outsourced partners do the core infrastructure works while Airtel stays ahead running the customer experiences. Doing that means it can grow faster because it can deploy dozens of partners (who get paid only when they deliver services) working across Nigeria at the same time. It is a very risky business model as the weakest link is now the weakest delivery partner. But the company has managed any risk very well.

Many quarters ago, Airtel was seen as a company that would abandon Nigeria. In the depth of the recession, the company struggled: it had so many underperforming assets. As the nation exited recession, Airtel upgraded its business model. Today, Airtel is leaving the infrastructure business, outsourcing all to partners across Nigeria. Typically, such enables companies to conserve cash. The impact is now visible in the subscriber numbers. Provided Airtel continues to find partners, it would continue to grow at a faster rate than its peers.

Telecom equipment leasing and outsourcing of critical infrastructure pose risks – your quality is determined by the capabilities of the partners. Most people like to be in charge of their destinies. But today, it is working for Airtel since the services are largely matured with very competent players who can deliver them.

The future of rural telephone and broadband services will move faster for Airtel in Nigeria since doing such will just require signing contracts with partners. The gestation period between investment and revenue is largely out because it does not have to worry about community negotiations, fees and other issues which make simple things hard in Nigeria. Airtel partners would have to deal with many of those issues.

The Airtel Africa transformation is a great case study of the power of business model: you must invest to get a working one. Most times, the problem is not the market but your business model. Blaming customers will not grow the business. Hello, Nigerian insurance companies!

Facebook is following the steps of Microsoft and Google in developing cloud games. This is coming following the deteriorating faceoff between the social media giant and iPhone maker, Apple.

The games services will be launched on web and Android, but not on Apple store, as Facebook says the usability restriction on Apple’s store policy pose a challenge to the game services.

TechCrunch reported that Facebook is not building a console gaming competitor to compete with Stadia or xCloud, instead the focus is wholly on mobile games. The system is designed to offer gamers alternative to streaming games, as long their device is capable of running it locally.

Facebook is aiming to get users into games more quickly and put less friction between a user seeing an advertisement for a game and actually playing it themselves. This means, users can quickly tap into the title without downloading anything, and if they opt to download it from a mobile app store, they’ll be able to pick up from where they stopped.

Apple has been in all-out war with Facebook and other companies regarding their terms and conditions, which were labeled oppressive. Epic Games, who sued Apple in the summer, and Facebook are at the forefront of the squabble as their games on the iOS were heavily affected by Apple’s new policies.

Following the launch of iOS 14 last month, Facebook is required to ask for users’ permission before it could be allowed to harvest personal data for targeted ads. Alternative to this procedure will require setting up a completely new advertising account to run campaigns for iOS users.

This development has limited Facebook’s ability to collect users’ data on Apple smartphones, and will have a serious impact on its campaigns.

Facebook founder

Apple has had a gaming app (Instant Games) Facebook launched earlier in August blocked because the game app was offering alternative stores with content that it cannot vet. Facebook launched the app without gameplay functionality, and it can be used to watch streams of other people playing games.

Apple kicked video game Fortnite out of its store, following Epic’s, the game’s creator, adding a feature that allows players to buy virtual currency using an alternative means, which denies Apple the opportunity to take its 30% cut.

In another case, Apple refused to waive fees for Facebook on its paid Online Events feature. The Online Event feature is designed to allow small businesses and individuals to organize paid digital events that Facebook users can sign up for and sell tickets.

Facebook had asked Apple to waive the 30 percent fee it charges from the in-app purchases for Online Events or allow Facebook process events payments using Facebook Pay. Apple turned the request down saying that it goes against its policy and App Store guidelines.

Following these incidents, Zuckerberg said Apple is becoming monopolistic and anti-competitive, and its practices are becoming harmful to customers.

“Apple has this unique stranglehold as a gatekeeper on what gets on phones. Zuckerberg told more than its 50,000 employees during a Q&A session. He added that California-based company’s app store “Cupertino blocks innovation, blocks competition and allows Apple to charge monopoly rents.”

Although Apple said in a conversation with TechCrunch, that they have continued to engage with Facebook on bringing its gaming efforts under its guidelines and that platforms can reach iOS by either submitting each individual game to App Store for review or operating their service on Safari, the social media giant seems to have had enough.

Apple had recently updated its policy to allow the game apps to exist, but it’s in a more convoluted capacity than the platform makers had hoped. The policy forces them to first send users to the App Store before being able to cloud stream a gaming title on their platform.

Facebook gaming executive, Jason Rubin says they are a non-starter for what Facebook’s platforms envisions – a way to start playing mobile games immediately without downloading anything.

Rubin said in terms of building the new platform onto the mobile web, without being able to point users of their iOS app to browser-based experiences, as current rules forbid, Facebook doesn’t see pushing its billions of users to accessing the service primarily from a browser as a reasonable alternative.

The steps taken by Apple to calm the storm generated by its policies, including the decision to withhold its cut through the end of the year for ticket sales of small businesses hosting online events, failed.

Facebook’s move for cloud games could cost the iPhone maker a fortune. Tech Crunch noted that Apple’s reticence to allow major gaming platforms a path toward independently serving up games to consumers underscores the significant portion of App Store revenues that could be eliminated by a consumer shift toward these cloud platforms.

Apple earned around $50 billion from the App Store last year, and according to CNBC’s estimate, gaming has been their most profitable vertical.

Facebook will be launching the cloud game services conservatively this week, starting with free services across a few states in the United States.