MultiChoice, the brand behind DStv and GOtv, is now trading in the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, hitting a market cap of $3.5 billion on its debut. In other words, MultiChoice is bigger than the market cap of Nigeria’s largest bank by market capitalization, GTBank. I am yet to understand why South African firms are valued way higher than Nigerian entities despite our economy being larger [sure, I understand rule of law, maturity of economy, etc but those cannot explain all]. The Nigerian Stock Exchange has a total market cap in the region of $35 billion while Johannesburg Stock Exchange is in the north of $400 billion.

The shares traded at 111.12 rand as of 11 a.m. local time on Wednesday, valuing the company at almost 50 billion rand ($3.5 billion). That’s the biggest listing in the city since Steinhoff International Holdings NV unbundled its Africa retail operations, now known as Pepkor Holdings Ltd., almost 18 months ago. The shares first traded at 95.5 rand.

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The move creates an Africa-focused company free from Cape Town-based Naspers, which has expanded around the world since making a blockbuster early investment in Chinese giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. in 2001. MultiChoice broadcasts live sport such as English Premier League soccer, global hit dramas like Game of Thrones and locally produced content, and services about 14 million households.

MultiChoice has a challenge ahead of it with Netflix, iROKOtv and others battling Showmax and its TV app. Bloomberg analysts believe that the company could “eventually settle at about $5 billion to $6 billion”. Yet, that will be for a while before a deceleration of value due to competition, not just from Netflix but from YouTube, Facebook, or anything that engages user’s time.

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The first question to address is, how integral is Nigeria’s Stock Exchange market to the overall economic value? I do think everything in Nigeria operates in silos, a lot of people don’t even know if the NSE here adds any value or not.

Again, larger aspect of our economic activities are informal, so it makes valuations very tricky. Even the banks in question, what is their revenue and growth model like? It’s not enough to declare big profits, so many things remain fuzzy in our economic space.

Until we learn to calibrate rightly, and also tie outputs to productivity; I am not sure how we can grow past the circles we have been drawing for ages.

Nigeria is a strange place, not just in politics, its economy is even stranger. So the key players in the economy cannot be totally decoupled from the fuzzy environment.

Why Naspers Unbundled MultiChoice (DStv, GOtv, etc) As A Separate Company

By Nnamdi Odumody

Social Innovation Incubator, Co-Creation Hub has decided to invest $11million in the country of a thousand hills; Rwanda. The R&D Unit will house designers, product developers and engineers who will collaborate with top scientists globally to solve some huge social challenges. The East African nation with its visionary leader Paul Kagame has made a bold decision to become a middle income knowledge-driven economy in Africa by the year 2020.

Co-creation Hub [CcHUB] will today officially launch the ‘CcHUB Design Lab’. The design lab is an unprecedented next step in Africa’s growing tech sector, and is set to become a leading creative space where its multidisciplinary team of product designers and engineers will collaborate with scientists and stakeholders globally, to explore the application of emerging technologies that will solve Africa’s systemic problems in Public Health, Education, Governance and the Private Sector.

The new state-of-the-art lab, located in Kigali, Rwanda, sees CcHUB, the leading innovation centre dedicated to accelerating the application of social capital and technology for economic prosperity, expand its physical presence to another African country, for the first time in its eight year history. CcHUB is now looking to partner with both public and private industry bodies from across the continent.

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With the expansion, CcHUB plans to invest approximately $11m in Rwanda.

President Kagame wants to change the narrative of Rwanda from its horrific genocidal past which led to the death of several citizens to becoming Africa’s Singapore. His government has made massive investments in technology infrastructure and human capital development with the Kigali the capital city offering free internet services. The Kigali Innovation City (KIC), a $2billion project located in Kigali’s Special Economic Zone, plans to create an innovation driven-economy which will play host to world class universities, technology companies, biotech firms, commercial and retail real estate on 70 acres of land.

The KIC project is expected to create over 50,000 jobs and generate about $150 million in ICT exports annually as well as attract over $300 million in foreign direct investments. Over 2600 students are expected to graduate annually from the universities inside KIC adding to Rwanda’s tech talent. Some of the human capital development institutions include the African Institute Of Mathematical Sciences to nurture solution providers using data science to solve the continent’s problems, Carnegie Mellon University USA, the world’s highest ranked in Robotics, and African Leadership University Rwanda. There is $100million fund for innovative startups.

Also, Andela which develops world class technology talents and connects them with jobs in leading global organizations is setting up a technology hub in Rwanda, its fourth African market, partnering with the Rwanda Development Board which is responsible for transforming the country into Africa’s hub for business, investment and innovation. Rwanda ranks 29^th in the World Bank’s Doing Business Report, and has an easy visa system for other African nationals in order to attract talent.

The Smart Africa initiative which is to create a framework for African states, to utilize smart technologies for digital transformation in order to improve productivity, and the quality of living in their respective countries is also based in Kigali.

Kigali is also home to a Fab Lab for hardware makers, the African Design Centre, the highly ranked University of Rwanda with World Bank African Centres of Excellence in Data Science and the Internet Of Things.

CcHub was attracted by the burgeoning talent available in Rwanda, the infrastructure, ease of doing business and Rule of Law which informed its decision to venture into the East African market.

Nigeria has a lot of lessons to learn from this, as investors will only put their money where the government of the day has sowed ahead for the harvest, as they want to reap bountifully.

Until you can master Fulfillment Center logistics (ship goods directly to end customers), your ecommerce operation will struggle. Today, companies like Konga are going hybrid – online and physical stores. That is the first phase towards the equilibrium which will be the omnichannel where immersive integration of supply chain and service will make customers agnostic of whether online or offline. Simply, you will have anywhere and anytime retail operation.

The key sentence is thus: “Our mid-term goal would see to the establishment of more stores across Nigeria”. Yes, the new Konga would be opening physical stores across Nigeria. Certainly, that is a great winning business model. Besides the money being in the physical space, having stores will reduce the marginal cost challenges associated with pure play ecommerce. The piece quoted me as it argued the brilliance of pursuing this hybrid commerce for Konga.

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The new Konga understands this and is working to enter the race where the opportunities abound. With these stores, the new Konga will crash its marginal cost and that would help it to take advantages of the online elements to deepen its competitive capabilities in the physical. As it does this, Konga would become the most respected retail chain in Nigeria.

Yet, no Fulfillment Centers (FC) can win without great Distribution Centers, DC (ship goods to stores) for a nationwide operation. Investing in that requires moving into big logistics like the ones companies like Kobo360 do.

The fact is this: the pieces are emerging in Africa provided the players can work together! Yes, you can focus on your FC while the DC is outsourced. But that outsourced partner must be wholly integrated in your operations to have efficient supply chain framework.

The Brilliance of the New Konga Strategy

I truly like companies we work with. ATB Techsoft is a category-king software entity which has grown rapidly over the last few months. With the company’s permission, I did a piece how we worked with ATB Techsoft, using the One Oasis Strategy, to shape strategy on the company’s software business. We found the oasis; yes, the best product: FinUltimate. Then, the One Oasis Mechanism was implemented, adding intelligence in the product with elemental AI systems. Today, FinUltimate has blossomed, and has a life of its own, winning markets and territories not just in Nigeria but Africa.

In business, you need to identify your best product (the oasis) and get other products to build habitations around it.  I’d spent time in a very fascinating software powerhouse in Lagos: ATB Techsoft Solutions. ATB Techsoft is one of the largest emerging software companies in Nigeria today with excess of 20 great products with applications across industrial sectors.  I would be sharing more on this company in coming days. But in a conversation, I asked the MD of the company to find an oasis within his firm. He came back after one week with an answer: its oasis is FinUltimate.

I share these contents from FinUltimate team below and certainly want you to send your sales automation business frictions to them. Every aspect of the technology is home-grown and developed under the leadership of the CEO. So, they have the capacity to evolve any process or system to meet your specific needs.

Features of FinUltimate

Sales automation is the process of using software to automate the business tasks of sales, including order processing, contact management, information sharing, inventory monitoring and control, order tracking, customer management, sales forecast analysis and employee performance evaluation (Webopedia).

The data derived from these activities helps to improve an organization’s sales process, and also helps such companies build better relationships with clients. This will ultimately lead to closing more deals faster.

Sales automation tools are usually accessible in real time providing the organization with vital reports on sales, revenue and the activity of every sales person in that organization. This helps to know who is contributing positively to the bottom line of the company.

Integrating sales automation into an organization’s operations provides useful data and insights that helps an organization improve its service. It also helps sales people become more productive.

Benefits of sales automation to an organization

• With sales automation, salespeople can record all their activities in real time which management can access to evaluate their impact. Management will then be able to make decisions based on real-time information made available from the sales automation system.
• Organization’s can set their sales process, ensuring sales people meet certain conditions before they can move deals to the next stage of their pipeline.
• Generated data fosters greater collaboration and information sharing among members of the organization

FinUltimate, a made in Nigeria CRM tool, is a good marketing automation tool. FinUltimate comes equipped with smart tools to drive up your sales.

Some of the features of FinUltimate includes: Email integration, Credit Management, Competitor analysis, Quotation management, Deal management, Pipeline management, Target viewing & much more.

You can visit https://finultimate.com to get started!

How a Lagos Software Company Is Growing