While others may have seen the opportunity, and choose not to pursue it, Poa Internet acted on what others failed to notice, walking to the beat of a different drummer.
Staring in 2015 in the UK, Poa Internet began its Kenyan operations in 2016 with a focus on the vibrant, once informal settlement of Kibera.
“While you see a few Bentleys in Nairobi, it’s the Probox that really moves the economy”, observed Andy Halsall, CEO of Nairobi-based Poa Internet.
Just as Equity Bank #ticker:EQTY focussed on the unbanked, the big financial institutions ignored, Poa seems on the verge of doing the same thing in providing internet connectivity.
With a vision to bring internet to every home in Africa, Poa Internet aims to connect the underserved communities of Africa, improving lives through unlimited access to knowledge and opportunities. What can we learn from this innovative disruptor start-up?
While others may have seen the opportunity, and choose not to pursue it, Poa Internet acted on what others failed to notice, walking to the beat of a different drummer.
A revelation came to Halsall, a computer science student and London Business School alumni while working for Fon, a Spanish firm that was rolling out large internet networks for leading telecoms like Deutshe Telekom — that with a dash of imagination — the cost of internet access need not be so high.
Staring in 2015 in the UK, Poa Internet began its Kenyan operations in 2016 with a focus on the vibrant, once informal settlement of Kibera. While most internet providers start with serving the more affluent, that can easily afford the service, Poa had a very different mindset.
It began in lower-income areas, other internet providers choose not to focus on. And, in the process, hired many of its 100 staff from those same locations. Today Poa offers unlimited home internet at a cost of Sh 1,500 per month, at about a third of the cost of the competition.
Plus, their now 12,000 customers get unlimited access to 10,000+ poa! hotspots for free, when they’re on the move.
When compared to, for example, North America or Europe, Kenyan internet access is relatively expensive, in the range of Sh 100 to 200 per 1 GB [roughly $1 to 2] where say in the US it would be Sh 30 to 40 per GB.While traditional providers like Safaricom #ticker:SCOM and JTL have to roll out an expensive ‘last mile’ fibre network […]
