[Transcript] #13: Airtel - How the world's second largest telco expanded from India to Africa
Originally recorded October 4, 2020
Bankole here,
I’m pleased to share the transcript of our Airtel episode!
When we recorded this episode, Airtel’s mobile money was much smaller. They were mainly a telecom company, facing fierce competition in Nigeria and their home market of India. They did not even have a banking license in Nigeria.
But a lot has changed since then. Their mobile money business is now growing faster than ever, $687M in annual revenue run rate. They have also secured huge investments from Mastercard, TPG and the Qatar Investment Authority. According to Airtel, they will use this money to improve their infrastructure and compete better in their markets. (MTN has also seen impressive growth in mobile money in Africa).
We are witnessing the dawn of a new era of financial inclusion, and it seems that the telcos have an edge over others. Unless they make some costly mistakes, of course.
You can listen to the episode again here, and if you are a paid subscriber, you can read the full transcript below.
Bankole.
[00:00:00] Olumide Ogunsanwo: Welcome to Afrobility, a conversation about African business and technology. Today we're going to talk about Airtel, the third largest telco in Africa. We'll discuss its founding and early history, success in India, and a potential entry into Africa. We'll also discuss its non telco businesses. Then we'll end with our views on its future outlook. This episode was recorded on October 3rd, 2020.
[00:02:04] Olumide Ogunsanwo: We're gonna do Airtel today. Why are we talking about Airtel?
[00:02:11] Bankole Makanju: Airtel for me is a great company that again coming from Nigeria and all the name changes they had is very difficult for me to see that as a user to be honest. In our podcast we try to cover long term successes And hopefully in our conversations, disaggregate how much of these companies success is as a result of time and place.
[00:02:33] Bankole Makanju: A lot of companies started at the right time and also like going to the entrepreneurs and what made them see something that other people didn't see or made them go against