Cellphone-based retail changing lives for 6,000 agents in Kenya

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Cellphone-based retail changing lives for 6,000 agents in Kenya
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CEO Tim Steel says Copia is able to deliver a package at one-sixth of the price of any other best-in-class e-commerce business in the world

Johannesburg/Nairobi — In the three years since becoming an agent for mobile e-commerce company Copia Global, Samuel Kihara has boosted revenue at his general store fivefold, opened a second shop, bought land and a truck and moved his children to private school.

Copia’s slogan, Maisha Rahisi, means “simple life” in Swahili. The company, founded in 2013 by US social entrepreneurs Tracey Turner and Jonathan Lewis, is still making a loss. But its sales are growing at a rate of 15% a month in Kenya, a country whose citizens have been quick to take up mobile e-commerce services ranging from money transfers to digital-loans.

Within 18 months Steel expects to have 18,000 agents, he said, and to have begun expanding into Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania. He expects the company to turn a profit within two years, though he declined to give financial details. Malaicha.com, which allows groceries purchased in SA to be collected in Zimbabwe at a small number of collection points, operates a similar system to Copia, albeit on a much smaller scale.

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