‘The journey is truly the gift’

 It is 9 am on a cold Monday morning in Nairobi. Our feature guest for the Inquisitor is two hours behind in London, United Kingdom. We are meeting on the Zoom platform which many of us are now familiar with. It is part of the new normal you could say. That, and online shopping! With the social distancing requirement, many have resorted to online shopping for convenience and as a precaution. Our guest entrepreneur is the founder of an online and mobile payment solutions company that is enabling seamless and secure trading across different platforms. Chris Munyasya is his name and my guess is that he has just gotten out of bed because he mentions to me that he never wakes up this early even for the things he likes!

What one word best describes Chris Munyasya?

Resilient!

Could you expound on that?

Sticking to something and following it through to the end is not the easiest of things. I attribute this to my education, upbringing and environment which have all enabled me to focus on getting the best out of everything in every one of my endeavors.

What or who are your motivations in life?

My mum and my sister!

My mum embraced failure in an open, supportive, and constructive manner. She believed in my potential despite me not being the most studious person in both primary and high school. She continued to provide counsel and opportunities for me to excel and here I am today.

My sister, Christine has sacrificed her time and skills for Pesaswap’s growth. She has never let me down whenever I have asked for help. We have grown and learnt to work together professionally, and our relationship has never been stronger! It keeps growing every day.

These two have made me look at things very differently. The journey is truly the gift.

Talk to us about Pesaswap and why you started this business in Kenya, while sitting in the United Kingdom.

Pesaswap is a TechFin. We are a technology company offering technological advancements and solutions and the first area we have focused on is finance, payments.

The key motivator for starting the company was the desire to give back to my home country. I decided to package all my experience and observations of the industry into this idea that would let Kenyan entrepreneurs know that one does not have to go to Silicon Valley to get things done.

The epiphany came while chatting with a friend who encouraged me to invest my time and energy in what I knew and understood best. My skills are in the field of technology and with technology being borderless, it felt like the right investment to make.

 How far back was this?

Four years ago! This was when we started building the product. We have been in business for a year now.

As a solutions provider in the online space and with good international exposure, what headway does Africa need to make to overcome the myriad of challenges it faces?

The opportunities in Africa are immense but so are the challenges!

The infrastructure in the market, particularly the business processes, is so fragmented and as a solutions provider, you cannot focus only on one niche. The solutions that are sold in the market only suit a specific problem and the lack of exposure by businesses on the variety of products available in the market is a major handicap for us as solutions providers.

That notwithstanding, the current uptake of mobile devices is a good opportunity for app developers to build local products that solve local problems. The technological barriers are also gradually being lifted as seen in the growing number of technology hubs. The youth are now getting skilled in technical subjects such as software engineering. I believe this should be given deeper focus going forward.

While many physical businesses are struggling, many online businesses have been making good money during this pandemic. Has that been the case with you?

Yes, it has! Although digital trade has slumped. While our customer acquisition is growing, the number of online transactions is not reflective of this growth in customers. I think this can be attributed to the difficult economic environment. People are prioritizing on only the essentials, many of which are not part of our digital footprint yet.

Talk to us about the challenges of being an entrepreneur in the “online or digital industry”

Competition in the online space is quite cutthroat! We however choose to view competition as an incentive for all the players to make better and quality products.

It has also been extremely challenging to educate people on who we are and what we do especially as a young company. I would recommend anyone getting onto a digital platform to hone in on a knowledge base and build on it as they grow.

Technology is ever changing, and you need partners to scale with as one cannot do everything alone. Finding the right partners with whom we can build a long-lasting relationship has been hard.

The regulatory environment has been a hindrance to business because of the bureaucracy. While regulation is a guard rail to ensure bad actors do not get access to the market, it in many ways can be a hinderance to the effective operation of the market.

Speaking of regulation, what are your perspectives on the 1.5% digital tax on the value of online transactions as introduced by the Kenyan government in June this year?

There is some ambiguity on the application of the tax. I am not convinced that the government is well-informed on how the online market operates. There is a digital transformation going on globally and it feels like the government is trying to play catch up with regards to regulation.

Much as regulation may be a good thing, If the tax becomes a barrier to people doing business online then this will cripple a sector with so much potential. As a payments provider, how do I reconcile with disseminating this information in an understandable fashion to my customers? How do I explain to them why this law is in place?

I think a more inclusive engagement between all stakeholders involved should ensue to provide clarity on the tax issue and possibly lobby on its application.

In your mind, what is the ideal governance set up to enable you achieve the vision and mission of Pesaswap?

The payments market is a very delicate and sensitive space and for us, transparency is of utmost importance! We need to be transparent in how we conduct ourselves more so on the products we offer. Consequently, as a young business, we felt that we would greatly benefit from external guidance and challenge. We have a board of directors consisting of five individuals: three external members and two internal members.

Our intention was to find the right people who believed in our ideas and could share best practice on doing business, especially in Kenya. The other aspect was to create trust in our brand particularly to our business partners.

Many entrepreneurs find it hard to find the right people to sit on their boards largely because of a lack of fit and buy in by potential board members on the entrepreneurs’ ideas, goals, and vision for the business. I thought not to ask Chris this question as I figured Chris’ experience would have been the same. I however thought to understand his perspective on when the ideal time is to establish a board. This question has drawn different opinions from previous entrepreneurs the Inquisitor has interviewed.

What advice would you give someone who is pondering on getting a board for their business?

To get a board, you need to be set up in a way that you will be unhindered in what you need to do going forward. You do not want early blockers and immense administrative work at the onset because your focus should be on the product. I think there must be a perfect mix of the individual’s and products’ maturity to allow that sort of infrastructure to come in.

What value would a Board add in a situation such as this pandemic?

The Board will make the hard decisions by ensuring that management develops and adopts the right strategy and policies to steer the company on the right path.

These decisions relate to assessing the current strategy, the outlook of the future and the competency of the current management. These decisions require a broad set of experienced minds.

Smart Boards should be focusing on a digital strategy right now!

 The online marketplace is close to being saturated with many youth eager to make quick money. What do you see some of them doing wrong and what do you also see them getting right?

These youth are our competitors, and we are learning quite a lot from them. They have covered so much ground in the payments space and the ease with which the masses transact and make payments online is all down to them. We are continually learning how to improve our onboarding processes, how to raise capital and how to aptly educate people on the solutions we provide. I would say that they are getting a lot of things right!

A general observation would be the need to better utilize the power that we have as solutions providers. The platform we have built at Pesaswap is agnostic to country and therefore, whenever there is an opportunity to scale the business, we would like to take with us one of the local companies, be it an insurance provider, a bank, whatever the case maybe.

The digital space is an ever-evolving field. What trends would you advise people to be on the lookout for going forward?

The increased need for data security and general best practice for one. Regulation is quickly catching up.

Data analytics is also an emerging trend. Businesses want to understand customer trends at the data level.

There have been a lot of investments on digital businesses particularly those offering essential services. I feel like the cost of Internet maybe needs to be subsidized to allow more connectivity and consequently enabling people to access such services on the cheap.

What have you learnt about yourself during this pandemic?

Not much has changed for me! I have however learnt to appreciate the friends I have. I am lucky to have them as part of my support structure.

I have doubled down on Pesaswap during this pandemic. I say this because during this period, we have established a board and are channeling our energies towards expanding the business. We have become more resilient as a business and are focusing on growing the brand both in name and product.

On the personal side, the pandemic has taught me a sense of humility, responsibility, and commitment as to what a company stands for and what leadership in a company should mean. At times I wonder, “What if I can’t make the next payroll?”  The business is not only about me. There is a whole ecosystem around it.

As an entrepreneur, especially one that is starting out, doing things in an ethical manner, and having the right people as partners is crucial.

Where would you like to travel to soon as the pandemic is over and what would you like to eat while you are there?

Narudi Ocha! I would love to come back home! It has been long since I have been there.

I had so much githeri in high school and so it is not something I am looking forward to (laughs). Maybe chapo and some stew!

What is obvious to many by now is that digital businesses are the next big thing. Chris mentioned that businesses that had not digitized some part of their operations have been forced to rethink and reinvent themselves. Can you imagine how expensive that is?

Here is the Inquisitor’s take: The Covid-19 pandemic has thrown many businesses into disarray. It has forced many to rethink their preferred way of doing business and it has forced many others to learn new concepts. Even as Chris continues to grow his business, he continues to learn from his competitors, his board, and his friends. The future we now know is digital. But the future is also about learning because experience has taught us that the digital space is an everchanging environment.

The Inquisitor