An Interview of Mr. Raj Hajela, Founder & Managing Director Estel Technologies talk about his breadth of experiences across several continents - and how telecom companies, banking firms and consumers in Nigeria are about to benefit from Estel’s platform

2. February 2013
EDITOR’S NOTE
MOBILE World Congress (MWC), the
biggest wireless trade show of the year,
will see all the world’s major gadget
manufacturers heading to Barcelona, Spain
for the February 25 - 29, 2013 event. No
occasion is more important for the
announcement of new devices and
company strategies and efforts to outshine
the competition. The 2013 MWC also
marks a move to a larger and glitzier new
venue at the Fira Barcelona Gran Via.
One of the superstars of Mobile World
Congress 2012 was Nokia, which redis-
covered its energy, shoved aside the usual
8-megapixel camera phone technology that
consumers have become accustomed to,
and presented attendees with a never-
before-seen 41-megapixel mobile – the 808
PureView. Who is going to pull new tricks
out of their hats at MWC 2013? The frenzy
is palpable.
Still talking mobiles, our feature titled
“Which Phone Should you Buy?” comes to
the rescue of users who need help deciding
how to choose a phone that best meets
their needs. We also have a scoop on the
most anticipated smartphones for launch in
2013 – phones that have taken away limits
Raj Hajela Steve Evans The Nokia PureView 808
and pushed them into the stratosphere.
Founder & CEO of Estel CEO of Etisalat, Nigeria was a sensation at MWC
And while Steve Evans (CEO of Etisalat, Technologies, India 2012
Nigeria) recently predicted a 40 percent
compound annual growth for African mobile Last but not least: our interview of the enabler’ whose multi-operator e-Recharge
broadband by 2015, our article ‘Telecoms month with Raj Hajela, Founder & CEO of platform recently went live in Nigeria. This
Boom Leaves Rural Africa Behind” suggests Estel Technologies India, brings to light comes at an interesting time when it is
rural Africa might just be left out of any the workings of a little-known (at least, reported that Nigerians transacted deals
meaningful growth in connectivity. in these parts) but efficient ‘technology worth N228m via mobile money in 2012.
Telecoms Boom Leaves Rural Africa Behind
WHILE mobile phone usage has exploded operators, and its capital, Juba, is teeming is only 61 percent, according to a 2012
across Africa over the last decade, with giant billboards advertising mobile study by research firm Informa.
transforming daily life and commerce for phones, but go just a few kilometers The average mobile phone user in Nigeria
millions, it’s a revolution that has left behind beyond a handful of fast-growing towns, owns an average of 2.39 SIM cards. Globally,
perhaps two thirds of its people. and cell phones become useless. only Indonesia is higher, with an average
Poor or no reception outside the towns Multiple SIM cards help users navigate of 2.62 SIM cards per user.
helps explain why the continent’s mobile patchy network coverage and take Even in Africa’s biggest economy,
penetration, in terms of the percentage advantage of price promotions from rival South Africa, SIM numbers comfortably
of the population using the service, is far operators. exceed the population, but given the
lower than previously thought, and the cost That is typical of much of the continent. number of people using multiple devices,
of providing that service to impoverished, With a population of just over a billion actual population penetration is closer to
sparsely populated areas remains prohibitive. people, Africa has over 700 million SIM 80 percent, says market leader Vodacom.
In rural Sierra Leone, a country where cards, but with most users owning at “You’ve got a lot of people buying SIMs,
GDP per capita is less than $400 a year, least two cards, penetration is only about but maybe not enough phones to put it in,”
money doesn’t grow on trees, but mobile 33 percent, according to a study released said Olayemi Jinadu, an executive with the
reception can, says street trader Abass in November by industry research firm Sierra Leone arm of Indian telco Bharti Airtel.
Bangura in Freetown, the West African Wireless Intelligence.
country’s capital. “If we look at the fact that the rural COST VERSUS BENEFIT
In parts of Tonkolili, a district in the center population of Africa is about 60-70 percent of The unserved rural millions could
of the country, or Kailahun to the east, it’s the population, and if we look at the degree represent another growth opportunity for
the only way you can get reception, he said. of penetration into the rural market, it’s Africa-focused telcos like South Africa’s
“You climb stick, like mango tree, before very, very low,” said Spiwe Chireka of MTN Group, Bharti Airtel and Kuwait’s
you have network,” he said. advisory firm IDC. Zain, but first they have to figure out a
In South Sudan, the world’s newest In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous cost-effective way to push into sub-Saharan
state, it’s a similar story. Less than a year country, there are more than enough Africa’s remote corners.
old, the country already has five mobile SIM cards for everyone, but penetration Cont. on Page 4 >>
2

3. February 2013
INTERVIEW
Estel Technologies is a leading and specialist
mobile financial services technology enabler…
Founded in 1997 and based in India, recharge); mobile remittances (money How will Nigeria (businesses and
Estel Technologies provides turnkey transfer and remittance service via consumers) benefit for your
software solutions and outsourced mobiles); mobile money (branchless banking experiences in the markets you
services to telecom operators, banks, for the un-banked); mobile banking (access to operate in (Africa, Asia, Middle East,
utilities and their service providers. bank accounts, and transacting using mobiles); Latin America)
In this e-Interview with Anne and voucher management (voucher, e-pin Users in Nigeria will benefit from our world
Agbakoba, the company’s Founder and supply chain management). class, feature rich, scalable and robust
& CEO, Raj Hajela, takes us through technologies for mobile money, mobile
his company’s breadth of experience Tell us about your role in helping
payments and prepaid e-Recharge. As our
across continents - and how telcos Rechargeitnow.com win two Deloitte
customers roll out their services in Nigeria
and consumers in Nigeria are about to Technology awards - the Fast 500 using our technology, we expect them to
benefit from Estel’s platform, which APAC, and the Fast 50 India awards. offer state-of-the-art mobile money and
supports a diverse range of recharge Rechargeitnow.com uses Estel technology prepaid recharge services - backed by our
options. Excerpts: to power its business operations. In fact, technology and their own internal business
What are the specialties of Estel the entire business of rechargeitnow.com processes - to achieve a leadership position
Technologies ? is built on Estel technology. Our platform within the country and region.
processes prepaid e-recharges for their
Estel Technologies is a leading and What kind of competition are you
customers, providing instant balance
specialist mobile financial services technology prepared for in Nigeria, and what is
credit of their mobile & DTH TV accounts
enabler with a significant presence with your advantage?
with their respective telecom operators.
Telecom Operators, Banks, Financial Competition is a way of life. We have
Institutions and Service Providers across What has been your work experience successfully tackled competition in many
the globe, with special focus on Asia, in African countries, and what is countries where we operate. We are
Africa, Middle East and Latin America. the business case for launching in hopeful and confident that our superior
We currently serve 24 large deployments in Nigeria? products and support services will win us
19 countries globally and are growing rapidly We have extensive experience of a significant share of the market here.
owing to our innovations and high implementing projects in Africa. We have
performance world class software platforms. implemented projects for mobile operators, As our customers roll out their
Our main products (software platforms) banks and service providers in Uganda, services in Nigeria using our
include e-Recharge Malawi, Guinea, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, technology, we expect them to
(anytime, anywhere, Sudan, Burundi, and Ethiopia. This has
any value, any given us a very good understanding of
offer state-of-the-art mobile
service prepaid the African region, the customer money and prepaid recharge
requirements, and local issues, services - backed by our
especially around infrastruc- technology and their own
ture. We operate a regional internal business processes - to
support centre in Uganda achieve a leadership position
to offer local support to within the country and region.
our customers in Africa in
the same time zone. This ‘Estel Technologies Innovates with
centre is backed up by IBM’ - what is this headline about?
our global 24x7 support Our partnership began with IBM many
centre in India. years ago, wherein we use some of their
Being one of the largest technology such as databases and web
countries and markets in servers within our products to offer high
Africa, Nigeria is obviously security, scalability and reliable solutions.
attractive! We expect Also, IBM successfully resells our solutions
two of our early Nigerian in specific geographies to customers as a
customers to go live this Systems Integrator.
month, and expect to get
many more in the banking In terms of tourism and relaxation,
and Payment Service Pro- what is your favourite location in
viders segments in the Africa, and why?
coming years. My personal favourite is East Africa for
safaris, and South Africa for a taste of
‘modern Africa’. However, I must say
that in all my travels all over Africa, I
have been highly impressed by the virgin
beauty of most countries, especially
Zimbabwe and Malawi!
www. esteltelecom.com
3

4. February 2013
>> Cont. from Page 2
“There’s great potential, but the big
concern for us is operational costs,” said
Andre Claasson, chief operating officer at
Zain South Sudan.
In rural Africa, the cost of running a
network tower often exceeds the revenue
it reaps. Fuel is typically about 40 percent of a
tower’s operating cost, and in remote areas
companies burn more diesel by bringing fuel
to towers than is used powering them.
Although roughly 73 percent of Africa’s
land has cell phone coverage, according
to market research firm IDC, that still
leaves vast tracts of rural Africa without
network access.
Africa has 170,000 mobile towers now
and needs another 60,000, according to
tower company IHS Group, which at an African expansion has not Bharti has earmarked $1.5 billion
average $200,000 each means an outlay been cheap for telcos. Over for capex this year, while fourth-placed
of $12 billion. the past five years, mobile France Telecom is spending $9.3 billion
“If you are an operator asked to spend between 2010 and 2015.
$200,000 to build a site and another
operators have spent a com-
Spare cash is increasingly rare for
$2,000 a month to run it in an area with bined $16.5 billion on capital debt-strapped European telecoms opera-
500 people herding cows, it doesn’t expenditure in the key tors, which are cutting their dividends to
make sense,” said Issam Darwish, IHS’s markets of South Africa, cope with falling revenues and network
chief executive. upgrade costs in their home markets.
Average revenue per user is also low. It Nigeria, Kenya, Senegal and Some African regulators have set up
can vary between $1 and $10 per month, Ghana… funds to promote coverage, to which
much lower than in developed markets operators are expected to contribute.
such as the United States, which delivered Chairman Sunil Mittal said last year. In Sierra Leone, the Universal Access
ARPU of $51 in 2012 or Britain, $27. Operators can save money by sharing Development Fund (UADF) is yet to
Bharti, sub-Saharan Africa’s third-largest towers, but even then, some sites will subsidize the cost of putting up a single
telecom group, says it makes $6.40 per user never make sense without government mast, though it has been active for
in Africa, which is higher than its home Indian subsidies, analysts say. several years. The regulator complains
market, where it makes only $3.30 a month, African expansion has not been cheap networks do not contribute the fees they
but the cost of operating in Africa is much for telcos. Over the past five years, mobile should.
higher and there isn’t a comparable middle operators have spent a combined $16.5 “If we can’t subsidize, they’ll never
class ready and able to spend more. billion on capital expenditure in the key erect towers there,” said Bashir Kamara,
“You either have a handful of people in the markets of South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Project Manager at UADF.
affluent part of the society or you have lots Senegal and Ghana, according to Wireless ($1 = 0.6350 British pounds = 160
of people who can’t afford the services,” its Intelligence. Nigerian Naira).
Source: Helen Nyambura-Mwaura and Simon Akam | reuters.com [Jan 31, 2013]
Which Mobile is Best?
Mobile phones have become a very important part of communications System it was designed from the ground up to
in 2013, making it almost impossible to live without one. They have become be driven via finger presses, rather than
smarter and faster – yet the sheer variety out there can become very confusing the styluses that were commonly used to
for anyone looking to buy a new phone. navigate around previous smart phones.
What really sets iOS apart from the
Focus on your top features you will never use. Focus on ease of use, crowd is the intuitive design of its user
speed and a good app store, which will interface. Most people can simply pick up
When it comes to choosing your phone, an iPhone and start using it, without having
pick the top two or three features you make your phone more flexible, so it can
become exactly what you need. to refer to a manual.
can’t live without, and focus on finding Apple has added numerous features to
a handset that offers them. If you love iOS over the years, including multitasking
to take photos and surf the Web on Choose your Operating System
Here is a quick run-down of the main support -- so you can run more than one
your handset, look for a phone that has application at a time -- and cut and paste
a good lens and a top browser. Or, if operating systems on the market:
features for text editing. The iPhone’s
poor battery life is a bugbear, consider a iOS App Store has also been a huge success,
phone with a smaller screen and a slower iOS is the software that Apple uses on offering thousands of applications to
processor to keep the power drainage the iPhone, as well as the iPad and iPod download, ranging from games to recipe
in check. Don’t be swept up in the hype. touch. When it was introduced on the
Don’t be afraid to say ‘no’ to features original iPhone, iOS was revolutionary, as Cont. on Page 5 >>
4

5. February 2013
Top 10 Anticipated Phones 2013
>> Cont. from Page 4
apps. iOS is still the gold standard for
mobile operating systems. Quite a few Android and Windows phones are due for launch in 2013. Consult
Android our list before you set out to buy or upgrade that smart phone.
Android is Google’s mobile operating
system. Although Google created the 1 Apple iPhone 6 6 Nokia Lumia 820
software, it’s offered for free to mobile OS: Windows 8
phone manufacturers, and now many of
the big names, including HTC, Motorola,
Samsung and LG, produce smart phones
that use Android.
Like iOS, Android has an intuitive
touchscreen interface and offers
advanced features, such as multitasking
and live widgets, which you can place
on the home screen. The software also
provides access to the Android Market,
from which you can buy and download
apps. While the Market isn’t yet as jam- 7 HTC 8
packed as Apple’s App Store, it isn’t that
far behind either.
2 Samsung Galaxy S IV OS: Windows 8
OS: Android 4.2 or Android 5.0
BlackBerry OS
RIM’s BlackBerry OS is only available on
the company’s BlackBerry range of smart
phones. One of the key features of the
OS is the way it handles push email. Windows Phone 8
Basically, this means that new messages
are pushed out to the phone as soon as
they arrive in the user’s inbox, rather than
waiting for the inbox to refresh itself.
Push email has made BlackBerry phones 8 Samsung Galaxy Note 3
hugely popular among business users.
3 Nokia Lumia 920
OS: Android 5.0
Cheaper models, such as those in the
Curve range, combined with the Mes- OS: Windows Phone 8
senger app, which allows people to send
instant messages for free to other BlackBerry
handsets, has made the BlackBerry line
popular among youngsters.
The BlackBerry OS wasn’t originally
designed for touch input. Despite being
upgraded to support touch in the last few
years, BlackBerry devices still aren’t as
intuitive as Android or iOS devices.
Windows Phone 8
Microsoft has been tinkering around with 4 BlackBerry BB Z10 9 Google’s Nexus 5
smart phones since 2001, when it OS: Android
OS: BB 10
introduced Pocket PC. But, although
Pocket PC and its later incarnation,
Windows Mobile, were packed with features,
they were also clunky and difficult to use.
Windows Phone 7 debuted to surprisingly
warm reviews in 2010, but struggled to
gain much market share, despite compa-
nies such as HTC, Samsung and LG producing
Windows Phone devices.
Fortunately for Microsoft, its latest 5 Sony Xperia Z / ZL
attempt at smartphone software –
Windows Phone 8 – is a job well done. It is
OS: Android 10 Samsung ATIV S
OS: Windows 8
snappy, easy to navigate and customise, and
good-looking too. Hopefully this will help
Microsoft jump up from its 2 percent of the
global smartphone market share, compa-
red with 75 percent for Android smartphones
and 15 percent for the iPhone.
Anne Agbakoba [Chief Research Officer]; Yetunde Quartermaine [Editorial]; Jean-luc Atelier [Admin & Artisanal Design]
Production
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