Kris Senanu, Deputy CEO for strategy, says ICT firm is betting more on regional market and new corporate solutions. He talks to BUSINESS TODAY about its fove-year ambitious regional expansion plan
AccessKenya shook the market with a Ksh300 million investment to spread its fibre optic network in Nairobi. Before that it had in October achieved a first among the local ICT community by opening an office in Uganda. The two events speak broadly of the firm’s outlook since it was acquired by Dimension Data, the global ICT giant, and Mr Kris Senanu is the man charged with steering the firm into the uncharted territories.
Since the January acquisition, Mr Senanu, previously a group managing director, has had to fit into the new shoes of deputy CEO in charge of strategy. “It’s not been a breeze changing from country to a regional strategy. I have to deal with different regulators and different business environments, but I am excited about the opportunity to expand into the region and we also see the company exporting its talent,” says Mr Senanu.
The company has not been shy about its regional expansion ambitions. It opened the Uganda office in less than a year after its merger with Internet Solutions, also owned by Dimension Data Group. Mr Senanu says the October launch was the first in its mid-term expansion programme that will see it go into 11 markets in East and Central Africa, starting with Rwanda and South Sudan next year.
“By April we will be in Kigali. If things pun out, we are also looking at opening an office in South Sudan by October. Afterwards we’ll go into the DRC and the rest,” he says. “Basically every six months we see ourselves opening up a new office within the region.” Besides the new offices, AccessKenya is now venturing into new areas.
“Before the acquisition we were a Ksh2 billion firm. By the end of the financial year in September we had an asset base worth Ksh3 billion. What that means is that we have the technical and financial clout to go into aspects of ICT that we couldn’t before,” Mr Senanu points out.
But having big financial muscle is not enough. The deputy CEO says the firm has had to drop its Home Solutions segment to concentrate on its strength. The only exceptions to the rule are cases where a company wants AccessKenya to connect the homes of their top executives to the office network. “It is not that it was not a profitable segment, but we want to concentrate on what we are good at, which is providing corporate solutions,” he says.
Going for complex connectivity
Moving forward, the company plans to focus on selling more complex connectivity in terms of Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), a service that has redundancy built in to prevent connectivity breakdown. It is especially critical for banks and hospitals as breakdowns often translate into losses running into millions of shillings. With the corporate world opting for cloud solutions in terms of storing crucial data, AccessKenya is betting its future on this platform.
“Within five to eight years we are looking at having Ksh45 billion cloud type of business in this region. This will be facilitated by people being more confident with the service. Currently, a lot of people have reservations because of security concerns due to cybercrime. However, Dimensions Data, our parent company consults for a lot of governments including the US. Because we have a lot of experience in security, we are able to guarantee our customers that their data will be secure with us,” says Mr Senanu.
After the regional expansion, Mr Senanu predicts that the company will have more than tripled its value to become a regional leader in the industry. “In five years I see us as a Ksh10 billion company. We will have finished our regional expansion and become the leading light in the ICT industry,” he says.
The company is planning to spend KshSh500 million in the coming year to expand its fibre optic cable network. Presently, the outreach is in 27 counties. Mr Senanu plans to grow the figure to 38 counties by the end of 2015. “We are also looking at enabling ICT at the counties and are therefore working closely with county governments to see how we can enable them in terms of revenue collection and cost management,” he says.
Leave a comment