The Launch of Swift Global Mombasa

I have to apologize that the stories seemed to have stopped. It was not for a bad reason and in fact I took the time to compile a flip book on how you can sell anything on the Internet. Giving a step by step guide on how you can scale your business by taking it online utilizing FREE tools and avoid paying for web design, web hosting, landing pages design all the way to utilizing Social Media to generate traffic for your sales funnel without having to pay a coin for it. If you want a PDF of the Guide, you can download it HERE or if you want to see it as a Flip-book, you can get it HERE.

Now back to my stories. The year is 1997 and we are still pushing to capture the entire International fax and dial up market. Horticulture and Tourism was booming and when business booms, the service providers make money. At some point Richard thought there was too much vernacular being spoken in the office and so moved to ban it and asked that any communication within or with customers be done in English or Kiswahili. This had an instant effect on sales. Dominic Chege who was our leading sales person had developed an amusing sequence of selling which even amused our then Head of Finance, Debbie who wondered what the guy on the other side could be saying. Chege would go in Kikuyu, "Eee, Eee, Eee Neguo"! and the deal was done. That was a sale. Having to do that kind of communication at a time there were no mobile phones meant he had to do it in the office where such conversations had now to be done in English or Kiswahili. Needless to say, that became one of his worst months in sales. We took these figures and a petition to Mohamed Jeneby who gracefully presented our case. Vernacular was reinstated but had to be toned down.

At that very time, the company decided to open a branch in Mombasa right after opening another one in Kampala Uganda. While I thought all was going well, it later emerged that the lady who was in charge of the Project in Mombasa (I can’t seem to remember her name) was not moving at the required pace and the project was badly behind schedule. Short of it is that I was one day called to Mohamed’s office and put on phone with Richard who at that time was in Scotland. I was going to Mombasa to take charge of a new branch set up that was running way behind schedule. The timelines were crazy. The good thing is that there was already a small team on site doing both technical and business development work. We got an office at the top of the Bank of India Building near Treasury Square where we had to start an office from scratch. While doing the partitions and purchase of furniture was straight forward, the usual technical difficulties were back in play. Finding reliable phone lines from KPTC on time, getting a leased line to Nairobi to connect the two nodes, setting up the office security, both physical and network, hiring and training teams and of course initiating pre-launch activities like having a critical mass of clients to go to launch with. ?

So when I landed in Mombasa and declared in my first meeting with the team that no one in technical was going to leave the office before 11 p.m. every day, I instantly became the most unpopular guy in town. There was work to be done, tight deadlines to be met and the project was running behind schedule. Dine ( Dragan Dincic ) and John Henry Mwangi were particularly not very happy with this new directive. Later on they appreciated it and really became my best friends not only in the office but in social circles too. We worked hard and partied even harder. I cannot remember a day that we did not party and drink late into the night. In fact one incident I still remember like it happened yesterday was when I blacked out in the car on the Likoni Ferry. I don’t know if they still do this, but those days, any time after midnight, the ferry would only arrive and leave every thirty minutes, and if an oil tanker was to be on board, it would be the only vehicle on board, so the people at shore had to wait another thirty minutes. So, on that God forsaken night, I got to the shore not in the most sober state and as Murphy’s Law would have it there were two tankers on the Likoni side waiting to cross. The Short of the story is that when I woke up, I was in a ferry, with cars facing the opposite side, heading in reverse back to Mombasa.

In the office we were able to meet the tight deadlines we had taken on, hired and trained staff, recruited a good number of customers to use the service as we worked on the official launch. That is when we had Mohamed Adam and Nelson Oloo (a.k.a Zero 100) Join Sales and Lucy Mwakalama joining the CS Department. We got some engineers from Nairobi, a branch Manager came in from Birmingham UK and soon I was off on my way back to Nairobi to continue my normal duties. I thoroughly enjoyed Mombasa. I remember how when the hotel food became flat and unattractive we sometimes left the hotel and drove far looking for Sukuma wiki and ugali. Business was also different as many of the customers preferred the Cover Page Service to the Black Box mainly because of the state of the telephone exchanges at the Coast at that time while others did not see why they would invest more money on a device that gave the same result.

Next I will tell you how I got myself in Uganda to start the next phase of my life.