Wananchi group, one of Kenya’s ISPs trading under the name Zuku has announced plans to purchase yuMobile from Airtel. The ISP says it has been eyeing the mobile money market and believes they have the might to take up on Safaricom. Zuku currently have a good marketshare in the triple play business, a market that has players like Safaricom, Whive and Sokotext keen on taking a share of.
Airtel on the other hand is selling the telco that was once crumbling after realizing that there was nothing to reap out of the empty shell that was left of yuMobile. This sale intent is of course pending approval by the Communications Authority according to Airtel Head of Communication John Kieti.
yuMobile was sold to Airtel with 8 million subscribers on board and it’s this market that Zuku is eyeing with a multitude of business ideas ranging from mobile money, mobile payments, mobile content among others.
Conrad Akunga, COO at Zuku said that his company will even start building applications that will have their customers use their phones more.
“Our focus will be identifying and understanding what the market needs in order to enable us develop innovative products and services that provide our customers with solutions to help them succeed,” said Mr. Akunga. He also lauded the efforts by Facebook for launching WhatsApp voice that plays quite well in their plans to have mobile phone subscribers use the internet more.
[UPDATE] This was an April 1st joke, the characters used in the making of this story are also fictitious.
