I still lremember the rude email sent to all customers by KDN just after the South African takeover saying that any customer with less than 4MB contracted was not a corporate and was being transferred immediately to Swift Global (remember them?) Needless to say - customers voted with their feet... Mblayo On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 3:36 PM, Philip Musyoki <pmusyoki@gmail.com> wrote:
I am a bit disappointed by the direction major Kenyan IT firms take once the get taken over by South African firms.
I still remember dial-up pioneer Africa Online and how vibrant it once was in the pre-fiber internet era. I always thought they had a lot of potential owing to them being early in the market and the first to lock-up major dial up customers. Upon take-over by the South Africans, their fortunes dwiddled and their brand has completely disappeard. I am told they still offer service.
Now the story of KDN could be different. I am not sure their business strategy was right from the beginning. Targeting wholesale circuit sales seemed always risky, as the corporate market had not developed.
I have always though most of the initial KDN owner businesses seemed to have been driven by good political connections and captical in the old regime, and later with the absence of that the businesses such a Kencell/Celtel/Zain/Airtel/<newcompanyname[String]> Sameer, Swift Global, KDN and even the empty Sameer business park struggled.
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