The launch of Swift Global Kenya

So here we are again. In the last article, I mentioned how my interview at Riscon went and how the position I was interviewing for was to be in a new business called Swift Global. This was April 1995 and?I was changing from an entrepreneur to an Intrapreneur, meaning an individual who works at a business but treats the company as his own business. We were standing on the verge of a technology inflection point. The Internet was knocking and we were right there with it at the door. Richard Bell had acquired a leased line from the Kenya Posts and Telecommunications Corporation (KPTC). If I remember correctly, it was a 32kbps link which was later upgraded to the ‘Very Fast’ Kenstream link at 64kbps (Currently, the TEAMS cable which is one of the six or seven submarine cables landed in Mombasa has an?equipped capacity of 27 Terra). Yet at that time, 64Kbps was the fastest dedicated line you could find in East Africa. The 64K link that Swift acquired connected a server in Nairobi to a switch in New York, where the main Swift Global headquarters was.

Our first business was to help customers deliver international faxes to most destinations in the world including to cruise ships through INMERSAT. Before I move further, allow me to try and explain what a fax is, as I have noticed that there are a number of people on this wall like Samson Byakika who may not have seen a fax machine in their life. Simply explained, a fax machine is a ‘photocopier’ that would deliver your copy to a similar 'photocopier' in a remote location. There was no email in those days and all communication into and out of Kenya had to go through a satellite earth station in Longonot (somewhere near Suswa on your way to Narok). So if you had a letter you needed transmitted to someone in Germany for instance, you would go to this ‘photocopier’ that had a dialing pad’ called a fax machine, key in the fax number of your destination in Germany and wait for the greetings between the two machines to happen over a telephone line. After the initial machine to machine greetings, known technically as fax retrain, there would be a handshake between the two machines. Once a handshake happens between the fax machines, a transmission would begin and your letter would move through the fax machine like a letter coming out of a printer. Once you receive confirmation that the transmission is done, the exact copy of your letter would be received at the other end and you receive a slip that your communication has been received on the other end in full. This sounds very easy and straight forward. However as I have indicated here, all communication into and out of Kenya went through the satellite earth station in Longonot, from where it would be switched to different destinations. On a good day, this communication should be trouble free, however most times the clarity of this line depended on the clarity between your own line and your local telephone exchange and between that exchange and the carrier room, and carrier room to Longonot and Longonot to some distant country which also then has the components of carrier room, local exchange to your destination. Companies would sometimes try for more than a day just to get one fax across to the other side?and sometimes it was as crucial as confirming availability of flight itineraries for traveling tourists, confirmation of plane spare parts for scheduled service, delivery of perishable flowers etc. Most companies we worked with, had to employ dedicated personnel whose main work was just to send, receive and file faxes.

KPTC was charging between $ USD 2.5 to $USD 4 per page of fax transmitted depending on the destination. If you compare this to an email attachment that we use these days, you will get the magnitude of the cost difference. So when Swift said it was going to cut this rate by more than half, customers were very much willing to listen. The biggest benefit Swift was bringing to the table was the Store and Forward functionality. Faxes sent through Swift would go as local faxes, transmitted through the dedicated leased line to New York from where they would be delivered to their final destination. Telecommunication infrastructure in New York and many parts of the world was much more developed than Kenya’s at that time and so delivery of the faxes from New York and not Nairobi was faster, easier and cheaper.

So as we started the preparations towards the official launch of the business, we were a sales team of four. A former jua kali businessman like me who had been battered by the struggling Kenyan economy called @Dominic Chege, @Jane Muiri, a lady from the Standard Newspapers Digger Classifieds and a gentleman called Kimani who we would later fondly refer to as ‘Wanjohi wa thwift Grobo’ started working on the plan to officially launch the business by the end of June of that year. Shortly thereafter, Reginald Tole and Peter Matayo joined the team to take charge of the technical operations and customer support. This team worked under Richard and Mohamed Jeneby who was also doubling as the Sales Manager of Riscon. Looking back I think this team was quite successful because of its attitude. The attitude was right and being entrepreneurs converted to intrapreneurs, the commission structure made a lot of sense. As I mentioned earlier, we recruited customers by connecting a device called a ‘Black Box’ to a customer’s fax machine. The black box would then detect international destinations and pass the fax through the Swift System to be delivered from New York at huge savings and convenience to the customer. As the salesperson, you made Kshs. 20,000 from each sale, so if you needed to buy a Kshs. 200,000 car, you simply had to sell 10 blackboxes and the car was yours. This was not a difficult task.

Given we had a product that the market needed and that properly addressed customer pain points, lead generation was not a daunting task. We had targets that needed to be in and connected by the end of June so that we do a launch with live clients on the network. These were days before the infamous Kaya Bongo, so the tourism industry was really booming. Almost every safari company we approached was ready to sign on, flower and other horticultural crops companies, chemical distributors, factories in Industrial Area etc were an easy target. Investing in a new system that was going to cut their international fax bill by more than 50% was a straight win. On the other end however, KPTC was the government, the regulator and the competitor. A powerful force that could shut you down with so much impunity. We were lucky that the winds of change in the country were already blowing. Kenya had already held it’s first multi-party elections in 1992 and was looking forward to a second one in 1997. Contrary to widely held opinion, the last 10 years of President Moi’s government were not as oppressive as the previous 14 years. With the little constitutional amendments that brought back pluralism in the country came several freedoms and respect for individual and business rights. This still did not stop KPTC from constantly harassing us and at some point, even withdrew the type approval of the black box, meaning you could no longer attach it to a telephone line in Kenya. ?Two days before 29th June 1995, after we had invited and received confirmations from several customers and dignitaries to our launch at Hotel Intercontinental Nairobi, KPTC in its characteristic style put up a half page paid ad denouncing our planned launch and warned anybody who would dare do business with us that whatever service we had planned to launch was in contravention of Chapter 411 of the Kenyan law. All this in spite of the fact that the chief guest at that function was H.E. Musalia Mudavadi who at that time was the Communications Minister whose docket KPTC fell. Long story short, and in typical Richard Bell modus operandi, we went ahead with the launch, held a very big event at The Hotel Intercontinental, only that we had to change it from a launch to a Consultation. Mr. Mudavadi did not fail us and led a strong team of officials to the event. Muriuki Mureithi reminds of this day to date.

I don’t have the full details of how this crisis was later resolved, but I know that we went ahead and connected very many clients to this network with very satisfying outcomes. KPTC would however continue with their intransigence and later stopped the launch of Form-Net as the first dial up ISP and Africa Online of Ayisi Makatiani in similar fashion. In my next article, I will tell you about the recruitment of more personnel, introduction of dial up Internet and Eudora email and the general expansion of the business.

#internet #communications #isps #Africa