Introduction How did you learn about the top 100 survey?
KenCall learned about the Top 100 survey through the newspapers. What made you participate?
We participated because we are passionate about the SME space and are very keen to help the successful players in this arena obtain the recognition for their efforts and excellence. So much of the business publicity in Kenya revolves around the large players and too little recognition, we feel, is given to the next generation of emerging companies. We wanted our voice and story to be heard and recognized. What is the core business of your company?
KenCall is East Africa’s first and largest international call centre/BPO outsourcing company. We focus on outsourcing customer service, sales and client management on behalf of clients in the US, UK and East Africa.
Background and how the business started What was your vision when you started?
To put Africa on the map for outsourcing. Would you say this has been realized? Y
es, but only partly. Still more growth to be realised.
Tell us the start up story of your company. Who started it? What was the motivation? When? How?
KenCall started in late 2004 just before Christmas. This company is the brainchild of the three founders, Nicholas Nesbitt (CEO), Eric Nesbitt (COO) and Steve Liggins (CFO). Nicholas and Eric grew up in Kenya and Steve worked in Kenya in the early 1980’s as a banker. Over the years, we all wanted to make a big difference to the country during our professional careers, but we never found a compelling opportunity until we came across this emerging global industry in 2000. Nicholas moved to study in the US after his A Levels and spent the rest of his time in the country always looking for a reason to come back home. While he was running a large division of an American telecommunications company called Qwest Communications he became very interested in the call centre industry given how much business was moving offshore to Indian call centres. This large migration of jobs offshore illustrated just how big of an opportunity this industry could be to improve the Kenyan unemployment situation. It was at that point that Nicholas recruited his new partners and began to explore the possibility of starting a call centre business in Nairobi. After spending several years working on the business plan and researching the business, the three partners realized that they could potentially create a huge business, if they could only overcome the legal, technological and financial issues. At the time, it was not common for new businesses to pioneer brand new industries in the country given that the country was just coming out of a highly regulated political environment. Nevertheless, the founders decided to commit to the venture and gave up their careers and their relatively calm lifestyles to embark on a lifestyle of struggling entrepreneurs. What was the source of start up capital?
Initially, all the funds came form the three founders. These funds were used to develop the business case, learn the industry, employ call centre consultants and fund the support of lawyers and other professionals. We raised the capital to start the business in several rounds. I chipped in a lot of my own money to start through the exploratory stages and then relied heavily on friends and family for the rest once we saw the viability of the company. We also were fortunate that NIC Bank believed in our initial vision and lent some of our initial capital and then Diamond Trust Bank came in later to help us as we grew out of the incubation stage and became a more solid business. How did the market respond to the idea of outsourcing?
Our initial target markets were the USA and the UK. Potential clients in those countries had never even contemplated that Kenya could become an international call centre destination. In fact, some of the prospects even laughed in my face at my initial proposal saying that giraffes and bones were what came to mind when they thought about Kenya. They certainly never thought about Kenya as a serious business destination where they could rely on world class service. The potential clients in East Africa were very wary of what we offered and many hadn’t thought about outsourcing their customer service departments, if they even had one. At the beginning, it was very slow going and difficult to convince international and local clients that we could serve them in Kenya as well as any outsourcer could service them elsewhere. What was your vision when you started?
Our vision when we started was very much the same as what it is today. We saw Kenya becoming a major outsourcing destination in the global business markets. We saw the country changing its education system and its ways of doing business to cater to work opportunities that were available in the developed world, only if we made some radical changes. We envisioned a new Kenya in which the standards of performance, the expectations, the ethics, the government machinery, the calibre of work all would all be forced to rise to levels unseen before. The carrot being the promise of more jobs, foreign exchange and the significance and recognition of being a country of world class professionals It was only through Work that we saw this all being achievable; not through reading books or attending seminars. I would say that this vision is being realized on our localized level, as KenCall. We are achieving our vision of creating hundreds o jobs within a few years of starting. We thought that within 5 years we would be a very significant player in the Kenyan business arena and it has only taken us three years of operation. I see us growing from strength to strength over the next few years as we build and even improve our processes and procedures across all parts of our business. Continuity and Growth What has changed?
Procedures, finances, new hires and management, clearer metrics, winning awards, extremely low attrition, stable and healthy clients, very flexible and supportive banking partner with Diamond Trust (DTB), fewer 18 hour days… What are KenCall’s key milestones? - Convincing the CCK to allow us to be the first company to be able to transmit international voice calls ourselves without being forced to have to use Telkom Kenya (2004)
- Obtaining the first Call Centre license from the CCK (2004)
- Starting the first client calls in the call centre (December 2004)
- Earning our first dollar (January 2005)
- Having our first profitable month of operation (May 2005)
- Growing over 1000% from 2005 to 2006
- Crossing the $1 million mark in in-year revenue by August 2006
- Raising funds from The Blue Link Mirror Fund (April 2007)
- Being the Top world wide call centre in Sales and Quality performance for one of the largest American ISP’s, beating out 11 of their other call centres globally
- Winning the Legatum Pioneers for Prosperity Award (in Nov 2007)
- Wining the large domestic outsourcing contract from Telkom Kenya/ Orange in May 2008
- Voted Top Non European Call centre in the World in September 2008 (beat Vodacom SA, 24-7 (an Indian call center). The award is based on high performance in training, quality, security, technology, employee satisfaction and client satisfaction.
What would you attribute growth to? - Hard work and determination
- Patience, perseverance and proactivity.
- Commitment to quality – staff go through three weeks of training before they can get on the phone. Staff are thereafter evaluated two to four times a week and are consistently benchmarked against pre-agreed standards.
- Commitment of staff
- Empowering environment for staff, our motto is”Be all that you can be”
New products and services - 999 Emergency services for the EA Region. (funded by various foundations)
- database and financial services back office processing inbound customer service
- technical support to clients of our customers
What challenges do you face today and going forward? Running KenCall is very challenging to keep to the “plan” given the many opportunities for growth. Distinguishing the strategic issues from the priority tactical issues is often very difficult. We face big strategic challenges in developing and obtaining the human capacity to implement the vision and the day to day business. Given our growth rates, it is very challenging to home grow everyone, yet the staff is committed and passionate it is challenging to bring in people above them without changing our very strong culture. Building an international brand is a very expensive undertaking and a very long process. We started out as an internationally focused call centre, but we are starting to find very exciting growth prospects within East Africa. How does our strategy adapt to the question of in which market to focus our efforts is one constant question we ask. We also face financial questions around our growth. Raise outside capital with all the commensurate issues or grow out of cash flow? All of these issues go hand in hand and need to be resolved simultaneously. Therein lies the challenge as a CEO. In overcoming these challenges, we stick to our core mantra, which is to create a thriving and professional business based around outsourcing people. We will continue to work closely as a Board, take outside counsel, remain humble, manage the cash everyday and focus on looking after our clients rather than what the competition is doing. Quite straightforward, it sounds, but keeping balanced with all of the temptations and frustrations is what challenges us as a leadership team every day. Funding and Cash and capital markets We see the public markets as a very encouraging opportunity for KenCall down the road. We as owners are in this for the long term. There is very little else that we could imagine doing if we were not doing this. We trust the passion we have for this business will last a very long time since it is such an intellectually challenging and inspiring line of work. Fortunately, the Nairobi stock exchange has proven that there is a tremendous amount of liquidity in the market, which means that more sophisticated capital from venture capital, private equity, sovereign funds will now come to Kenya given that they can see a readily available exit strategy. We will continue to evaluate our future funding options. Employees KenCall has close to 700 employees and we expect to hire another 150 people of so by the end of the year. We have given our employees the ability to see that with hard work and dedication, anything is possible. They are able to see how their actions immediately turn into results demonstrating their own power and influence as individuals. Our business model allows our staff to “work abroad from home” obtaining many of the professional skills that would serve them well even if they chose to work abroad What are future growth plans? Our customers should expect a very professional, multi national KenCall that provides almost all their staffing needs across their enterprise. KenCall will continue to be an award winning organization bringing its expertise and knowledge to companies all over the world. We expect to list on the Nairobi or London exchanges within 3 years. We may consider some joint ventures with like companies in our industry from India, South Africa, Europe or the USA. We have been approached by such companies numerous times over the past few ears, but we are having too much fund doing what we are doing right now to give it up to someone else. We fully expect to be in other countries as well, as our clients request it of us. We expect to have over 5,000 employees within 5 years. We will continue to get better clients, build our expertise and competencies in more advanced areas than simply customer service. We will also invest heavily in equipment and technology and even develop more call centre locations within Nairobi and possibly even in the smaller cities within Kenya. We will continue to help the government move towards an eGovernment outsourced model and intend to participate in some of the opportunities that will inevitably arise from the government’s new business model. For Kenyan society, KenCall has been able to make the country proud that a Kenyan company can come out from its infancy, and in a very short term become a global industry leader on the world stage. Very few Kenyan companies can make that claim today, but we believe that going forward, many others will become leaders in their own industries, purely given that KenCall has shown that it’s possible for a Kenyan company to become a global leader in its industry.
What advice can you give to the youth?
- Become a student of the industry you are in.
- Hurry up and follow your passion
- Find a mentor to learn from their experience, exposure and knowledge
- Speak up and be noticed – if you are passive, chances are you’ll never succeed.
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