Poa Internet Kenya

The problem with the Internet in Africa is that it is either not available or it is unaffordable. This translates into the following problems for people: customer technology is costly for the individual. This prohibitive costing creates scarcity and as a result digital skills potential not yet unlocked

Poa’s mission is to fix this:  Internet in every African home. 

The intervention is to introduce and proactively facilitate a ‘sharing model’. 

By introducing the sharing model, more people will start progressing on the internet adoption curve, whilst creating a resilient community by offering diversified revenue streams to micro-entrepreneurs, 

This sharing model has different elements: highspeed, low cost broadband for your business with tools for monetization, digital skills training and free digital educational resources
 
This intervention will drive medium term outcomes ubiquitous access and adequate digital education that are required to achieve the long-term outcome of Internet in every African home

In Kenya 28% of the population live in urban areas where 47% of these population leave in informal settlements. Only 40% of the entire population has internet connectivity. 

One of the challenges is the lack of adequate infrastructure and knowledge on how to create a vibrant digital economy. Digital infrastructure has not made much inroads into the rural and peri urban areas hence reducing the chances that the population in this areas would have to get a piece of the digital economy. This infrastructure is deemed expensive due to the low income that is prevalent in these peri-urban areas and the sparsely populated nature of rural Kenya.
Poa internet will introduce a sharing model where people can use this avenue to venture into digital entrepreneurship. This sharing model provides a platform and tools for micro-entrepreneurs to monetize their internet connection so that they become more resilient. It is particularly suited for the informal sector or where the economy is scaled down to small packets that can be easily sold to consumers. The informal internet reseller businesses are usually run by youth, women and marginalized groups, so enabling them to scale through tools, platforms, training, access to finance will improve their livelihood.

The sharing model is a proposition that comes on top of our current home proposition. We will provide the digital entrepreneur with an internet connection to his premise that has a higher speed/bandwidth. This internet connection will be delivered through a wireless point-to-multipoint connection via an antenna that we will install on the rooftop.

The sharing model proposition will have:

• Highspeed, low cost broadband for your business or home

• Install one or more high powered WiFi hotspots to share you Internet connection with your customers, neighbours and tenants

• Generate revenues through

  • The sale of Internet access

  • Providing digitally enabled services

  • Selling smartphones

  • Mobile phone charging

• App and cloud-based platform to easily manage your hotspots, sell access and manage the service 

• Micro Financing of equipment available

• Free online training on how to set up, operate and manage your hotspots.

• Make your business more attractive to your customers and generate footfall. Create adjunct revenue opportunities e.g. selling sodas to customers using Internet

• Professional installation of equipment at your premises within 48 hours

• Training and certification as Poa hotspot operator

• 2nd line support for you and your customers

• Poa marketing materials for display in and around your business

Rural areas as well as informal settlements in urban settings in Sub-Saharan Africa are traditionally left behind when providing infrastructure, both digital as well as other types (grid power, piped water, sewage, etc). As a result, these already vulnerable communities are not getting the much required opportunities to bridge the digital divide. This creates a huge social challenge, but also a great commercial opportunity. 

Lower income people, poor people, unemployed youth, women make up a significant part of the population of the areas that we target. Those are the groups that we serve with our proposition. 

At the heart our service will be a network of micro-entrepreneurs. We will identify existing local stores, known commonly as Dukas and will empower them with digital skills training to offer a range of internet access and digital products. This will include hosting and operating public WiFi hotspots, selling micro-financed smartphones, WiFi access and home broadband, and selling digital services such as fintech and edutech products.  

Our solution will create much needed technology jobs among the youth in these communities. It will drive additional revenue opportunities and footfall to the Dukas. In addition most of the Dukas in rural areas are run by women, ensuring that we will help bridge the gender gap as well as the digital divide.

Our sharing model is a technology-based solution that will provide low-income and remote communities access to digital infrastructure and safe, affordable internet. It will also equip everyone, regardless of age, gender, education, location, or ability, with culturally relevant digital literacy skills to enable participation in the digital economy.

. Our solution will:

•  enable micro-entrepreneurs in untapped communities like urban slums and rural areas. It will help make the entrepreneurs and the communities they serve, more resilient;

• provide them with access to technology and micro-financing;

• create jobs;

• equip entrepreneurs and the community at large with technological and digital literacy. 

We have been testing parts of the sharing model in an area called Pipeline in peri-urban Nairobi. Offering customers higher speeds than our standard consumer proposition. We had just over 200 customers in that area and used that population as our test group and use semi structured interviews (SSI) and immersive observation to gain customer insights.

We offered our customer different speed/price combinations to further study their sharing behaviour as well as friction points that they experienced.

Every Internet Service Provider (ISP) on the planet is trying to prevent its customers from ‘sharing’ their internet connection with others. Kenya is no exception. The traditional ISPs are fighting the informal resellers (called ‘sambaza’, which means ‘sharing’ in Swahili) tooth and nail.

Instead of fighting them, at poa we are facilitating them. Helping them to grow their business as we believe that they are crucial in realizing our mission: Internet in every African home. Our direct to consumer product is priced very attractively compared to the traditional ISPs (50% cheaper than the nearest competitor). But, it still out of reach for the majority of Kenyan households. So by facilitating the ‘sambazas’ in creative ‘last inch solutions’, meaningful internet access will become available for the people that can’t afford a home internet connection in the traditional way (direct to consumer from a tier 1 operator).

Our current proposition, fixed wireless access to the home (home internet), has over 10,000 active customers.

We intend to grow organically to triple this number in the next 12 months to 30,000

In 5 years time, we anticipate to have over 1 million customers

By introducing this proof of concept, we believe that we can reach several hundreds of micro-entrepreneurs in a year, who in turn will each on average serve 9 customers. In addition, they will serve thousands of customers by their public WiFi offering. If successful, this intervention will help us to exponentially grow the subscriber base in a very sustainable way, deeply ingrained into the local community, making the latter more resilient. It will assist in reducing the cost to grow as well as provide innovative last inch solutions, thus reducing the prohibitive costing as a friction point for people to get online in a meaningful way. This in turn will increase the number of customers that we serve (indirectly) exponentially.

Some of the key metrics that we use are (also for our regular product/service):

• # of customers connected (CPEs)
• # of active CPEs
• # of gigabytes consumed
• $$ revenue generated
• # of schools connected
• # of pupils connected

In addition, for this intervention the sharing model, we shall track the following additional metrics:

• # of unique end users (customers of our sharing customers/micro entrepreneurs)
• # of sessions of these end users
• # of gigabytes consumed per end user
• # page views of our offered content

Besides these 'hard metrics', through immersion and semi-structured interviews, we will also get insights in:

• # of people employed
• potential uplift in livelihood/household income
• impact of the internet service
• impact of the delivered content

Full time 

• Sales team of 30.

• Office/support 20.

• Technical: 20

Contractors 

• Technical 20

Poa Internet is headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya. It operates in several counties in Kenya, The team is a unique mix of cultures with a variety of experience across the board.

CEO

Andy Halsall: 26 years telecom and emerging market experience Fon, Palace Ventures, Orange, McKinsey, AMS and IBM. MBA London Business School, BSc Computer Science University of Bradford.

COO

Chris Rhodes: 22 years telecom and tech company experience Talk Talk, MCI WorldCom, NTL, Level 3 and Radialpoint. MBA London Business School, BSc Electrical and Electronic Engineering University of Bradford

CBDO

DJ Koeman: 22 years telecom and emerging market experience Equitel, Airtel, Narrow Minds, Digicel, Vodafone, Orange & KPN. BHA from Hotelschool The Hague.

CTO

Mike Puchol: 16 years telecoms and wireless systems experience Fon, Whisher, Social & Beyond. BSc Aeronautical Engineering University of Salford.

All 4 co-founders are still actively involved in the business. 3 of them live in Kenya and between the 4 of them, they have over 80 years of experience in the telecommunications sector, including start up and emerging market experience. 

At Poa we really believe in what we’re doing. For most it's more than just a pay cheque -it is an opportunity to directly engage with the communities we work with and make a real difference to people’s lives.

We work together to solve issues and encourage a culture where you get to think, not just do and you're allowed to make mistakes as you learn.

We do not have a specific policy or strategy regarding DEI. However in our HR manual we have an Equal Employment Opportunity Policy. 

The objective of our Equal Opportunity Policy is to improve business success by:

• Attracting and retaining the best possible employees

• Providing a safe, respectful and flexible work environment

• Delivering our services in a safe, respectful and reasonably flexible way

We are in the process of hiring some senior team members, the director of people and the customer director. Our aim is to localize the team, and these 2 new hires are both Kenyan and women. The director of people will play an instrumental role in crafting the DEI strategy and execute against.  

Also, we are restructuring the business to allow for 30% local shareholding with a local Board that will be predominantly with local Board members.

Currently, our growth is constrained by the amount of capital deployed. As we have to both build infrastructure as well as invest in customer equipment, our growth rate is limited. This, in turn then results in customer pricing that is still prohibitive for a large part of the market. Disposable income is limited.

Winning the MIT Solve challenge will help us in running a trial for a different business model, the sharing model. We will do this by building this vital infrastructure which is missing in the areas that we intend to serve, left behind by the traditional communication service providers due to lack of revenue density. Empowering the marginalized communities will empower more people since they support a larger ecosystem. 

We believe that building this infrastructure in these areas will give the marginalized communities access to the digital entrepreneurial platform and will go a long way in bridging the digital divide gap while creating good jobs and inclusive entrepreneurship. 

Winning the MIT Solve challenge and becoming a Solver will give us inroads into advisors that can help with access to additional grant funding, further deepening the social impact of our solutions, forge partnerships and give additional advice on sustainability, inclusion, etc.

Business model/Financial: in order to be able to run this proof of concept, we will need external funding in the form of grant/prize money, as our current operational budget is already stretched. The revenue model for the micro-entrepreneurs will be similar to what we already have in the market, but the proof of concept is required to find the sweet spot for risk vs effort vs reward

Human Capital: as we are scaling the business and we are more and more focusing on impact, we welcome advisors and/or local board members. Localizing the senior management team is part of our DEI strategy and we welcome support there

Monitoring and evaluation: the proof of concept for the sharing model will have a large M&E component. People with experience in this particular field are welcome to assist and contribute

Worldbank and its affiliates such as IFC are great entities to partner with, as they validate the proof of concept. In addtion, they have access to additional funding (both grant as well as institutional investment) once the model is proven successful. This will help tremendously with scaling, as we believe that this model is suitable for almost anywhere in the Global South!

Within the Solve ecosystem, you have several interesting advisors, for instance Eric Schmidt. he could be a person of interest when partnering with Google, as what we are doing is perfectly aligned with their objectives

Within the Solve team itself, there are various communities that could provide assistance, such as but not limited to: sustainability, partnerships, learning, etc. Our sharing model and platform with content is something that can have learning, health, etc all riding on the same infrastructure. 

Outside Solve, partnerships with GSMA for instance is a possibility. For very remote locations, 5GHz may not be the right technology, but using low frequency LTE instead (450MHz). GSMA can assist with licensing as well as best practices for network deployment.

In addition, we will want to partner with Community Based Organisations (CBOs) in the areas where we want to run the trial.

Besides that, partnerships with 3rd parties, whose strategic goals are aligned with ours, are desired. For instance in the content space (Bridge International Academies) as well as in the education/training space (Kuza Biashara and smrt.bio)

We believe that by introducing the sharing model, more people will start progressing on the internet adoption curve, whilst creating a resilient community by offering diversified revenue streams to micro-entrepreneurs, the backbone of African society.

Our solution will provide access to digital education resources; by offering 3rd party content, digital education training as well as 3rd party services, we create an ecosystem that will benefit both sharer as well as customer

We will use the HPR Prize to further enhance the tools we provide to the micro entrepreneurs and community, improve the UI and curate additional content, etc

We will also deploy more boots on the ground to provide the necessary training

Every Internet Service Provider (ISP) on the planet is trying to prevent its customers from ‘sharing’ their internet connection with others. Kenya is no exception. The traditional ISPs are fighting the informal resellers (called ‘sambaza’, which means ‘sharing’ in Swahili) tooth and nail.

Instead of fighting them, at poa we are facilitating them. Helping them to grow their business as we believe that they are crucial in realising our mission: Internet in every African home. Our direct to consumer product is priced very attractively compared to the traditional ISPs (50% cheaper than the nearest competitor). But, it still out of reach for the majority of Kenyan households. So by facilitating the ‘sambazas’ in creative ‘last inch solutions’, meaningful internet access will become available for the people that can’t afford a home internet connection. We have designed a a disruptive pricing model that aligns the economic interests of all players in the value chain; from the ‘sambaza’ to the upstream provider. Pay what you use. Instead of capped speed against monthly instalments, we don’t cap the speed, but charge for consumed Gigabytes instead. These Gigabytes are priced so cheap, that there is plenty of margin to be made for the micro entrepreneur while still being affordable for its end customers 
We will use the GSR Prize to further enhance the tools we provide to the micro entrepreneurs, including (crypto) payment/collection options, curate additional content, etc