Strive Masiyiwa recently took to his Facebook to comment on the progress made by Sasai thus far and he shared some interesting information about the recently-launched social payments application.
His Facebook post read;
Personally for me, as an entrepreneur, the most satisfying part of the launch of Sasai was knowing that as Africans we have the capacity to master complex technology platforms that can launch global businesses like What’s App, Instagram, Twitter, Alipay; if we put out minds to it.
Austin Zim is right in observing that Sasai App has now been downloaded successfully and used in more than 75 countries around the world.Yes, we still have the long journey ahead to make it a sustainable profitable business, but it should encourage every young entrepreneur out there to start believing that they can mobilize technical and leadership skills in Africa that can launch platforms that can go global.
In Sasai App, Vaya Africa, and Clean City we showed that we have mastered this digital platforms technology.
I want you to do the same and launch an explosive wave of products and services that address the needs of Africa.
BTW: We have two other platforms that are now ready. I had to make them wait to allow Sasai to be absorbed in the market. The technical and leaderships teams are polishing up!
Let’s Go Africa!
Your time is now!
Why this is important?
This is a pretty interesting revelation that suggests there is interest in the application both on the continent and beyond. If Sasai can push diaspora users to communicate with their families via Sasai that will be a small win that could convert some users. To do that permanently Sasai would have to offer some more functionality outside of chatting and considering the fact that EcoCash FCA is only available locally there doesn’t seem to be a way to allow foreigners to remit money directly through Sasai.
Why it’s not so important
Though the application has been downloaded in 75 countries (and counting) active usage is more important. Mr Masiyiwa didn’t comment on whether or not the application has active users in all of these countries so that’s not clear.
At the launch of Sasai, executives working on the app acknowledged the presence of unused apps (they referred to them as ghost apps if I’m not mistaken) -apps that you download and use in that moment. After that you never use that app again. Hopefully, Sasai’s downloads don’t fall into this category…
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Vaya Africa and Saisai are white label apps that have been customised for Econet. We aren’t entirely “mastering complex solutions”, we are just redeploying a solution someone has made for any willing buyer. It’s not a solution designed primarily for Africa, or primarily for Econet. The source vendor is still the MASTER of the solution. This is what exposes Econets customers to disappointments when there is a fallout with it’s upstream solution providers #KweseTv.
True, it’s a bit ingenious to suggest that they are mastering complex solutions but it seems the thinking for them is “why build from scratch when we can build on top of existing solutions” in the case of Kwese it was disastrous but I think it could work for Vaya since there’s no better alternative.
For Sasai the problem is there is WhatsApp and a host of apps better than it. I think the method works in some instances but doesn’t and Econet are taking a one size fits all approach…
Why build from scratch?
The problem with white label solutions is that tomorrow, Telecel/Netone can also get a chat app with all the exact same features as Sasai. They just need to go to the same vendor. The difference being that Telecel won’t even suffer any of the teething problems.
Building from scratch would be non-trivial for Econet, if it employs sufficiently competent developers. It also gives them more control over the features and lifecycle of the product. As well, like they keep whining about, they don’t have a pay their vendor in Forex.
Further to that, they aren’t at the mercy of the vendor who can shutdown services to them e.g, in the case of Kwese.
it’s not even white label the developer of Sasai is http://gigaiot.com/
Thanks so much for this
I think Econet just shotguns ideas. A shotgun fires off a hundred pellets with the hope that one or 2 will get through. That’s the business model they operate on. Rather than research, or come up with a truly targeted product, they are just trying anything and everything in the hope that one idea works.
That’s were the flaw in the strategy is. Which is why their products become hard to market, as they aren’t even sure how to sell it.
Observe those apps once the marketing guys run out of steam and stop dishing out freebies.
Give it a universal name. That’s why kwese faile
Give it a universal name. That’s why kwese faile