Airtel’s Money head feted at the Annual IT Women Conference

Airtel Kenya’s Head of Airtel Money Topyster Muga has been crowned the IT Woman of the Year at the first Annual IT Women Conference in Sub-Saharan Africa organized by Techno Brain- Kenya. 

Dubbed the Pink Potential Initiative, the event brought together over 100 women in the IT industry to mentor, inspire and network and is aimed at celebrating the great achievements by women in the industry.

Lydia Njaaga, Microsoft Products Director presents a certificate to Airtel's head of Airtel Money, Topyster Muga.

Topyster was recognized for her contribution in the IT industry having spearheaded innovation of the Airtel Money Pesa Card – a Visa card mirroring the Airtel Money account, being part of the project steering committee to spearhead the formation of the mobile money association of Kenya and winning the Nelson Mandela scholarship award to undertake an MBA at INSEAD Business School in France and previously while at Vodafone Group, leading the launch of M-Pesa in several emerging markets.

“Pink Potential fosters a mentoring approach.  Mentoring is a critical link to career advancement because it enhances employee satisfaction, improves retention, advances business objectives, and increases productivity.  It can also enrich the professional and personal lives of both mentor and protégé. We are excited for Topyster and for Airtel for demonstrating their support for women in IT,” said Sarah Richson, Global HR Director, Techno Brain Group.

She added: “One of our key objectives is to recognize and celebrate IT women who are making a difference in their world as well as to inspire more women into an IT career trajectory and leadership. Toppy has exhibited this in her leadership and the strides she has made at Airtel.”

On her part, Topyster noted: “I am humbled to be the recipient of this award. This clearly is a recognition of the continuous effort that women in Kenya continue to put in the IT sector. This recognition is a great motivation to hundreds of women who continue to give their contribution in different sectors of the economy and is also a challenge to our young women who are inspired to achieve their dreams.”     

“Women are breaking barriers and succeeding in careers that many could never have imagined. Topyster’ s recognition is a timely motivation to our women employees and many others in different sectors who need to believe in their potential to succeed in whatever fields they want to pursue,” noted Airtel Kenya Chief Executive Officer Adil El Youssefi.

The Annual Women IT conference is an event that seeks to acknowledge individuals who have spearheaded innovative new software or products, or generally-available IT services, that make the biggest contribution to business technology or to IT in general. 

Airtel continues to record growth in data, mobile voice and SMS traffic

 Airtel Kenya CEO Adil El Youssefi takes Viola Kipchumba (center)through the process of subscribing to Airtel Unliminet. Looking on is radio personality Amina Abdi.

The quarter under review exhibited mixed trends in terms of local mobile voice traffic per operator.    

  

Airtel Kenya Limited experienced an increase in total local mobile voice traffic that stood at 1.85 billion up from 1.83 billion minutes reported during the previous period. 

Its market share for the whole financial year grew significantly to stand at 16.4 per cent up from 10.7 per cent market shares reported in the previous year. This growth could be attributed to Airtel’s acquisition of Essar’s yuMobile subscriptions late last year.      

The total number of SMS sent has maintained an upward trend regardless of the stiff competition from OTTs. During the quarter under review, local SMS traffic stood at 6.57 billion up from 6.55 billion messages reported in the previous quarter. Similarly, the volume of SMS sent throughout the year grew significantly to 27.4 billion up from 24.4 billion messages sent during the previous year. This could be attributed to the lowering of SMS tariff and provision of lucrative SMS bundles by a majority of mobile operators. 

Airtel Kenya’s SMS traffic volume gained 1.1 percentage points on market share to stand at 8.0 percent with 527 million SMS during the quarter up from 452million messages registered during the last quarter. The total messages sent throughout the year stood at 1.5 billion up from 731 million messages sent during the previous year.    

Airtel’s market share for data grew year on year from 13.5% in the previous year 2013/14 to 19% by the end of the year June 2015. Safaricom’s market share for data dropped from 71.6% in the previous year to 63% by the end of the year.  

    

The growth in mobile voice traffic, SMS traffic and data for the second largest operator in the country may be attributed to its innovative product- Airtel #UnlimiNet that was launched early this year. The product continues to  champion #UnlimitedConnections to Kenyans by ensuring that they are always connected by the ability to call all networks and remain connected with friends and family on social media platforms and profession networks on the internet even after they run out of data bundles. Airtel UnlimiNet allows customers to enjoy free minutes voice calls and SMSs to any network, making it the most affordable cross-network voice call offer in Kenya with blended rates as low as Ksh 1.7 per minute.    

The growth may also be attributed to the company’s network upgrade exercise undertaken in the months of April, May and June that significantly enhanced Airtel’s network capacity, robustness and help deliver best-in-class experience that include improved voice quality.    

Early this month, Airtel launched a 50-day-long national consumer promotion dubbed Smartika na 5X, that will give its customers a chance to win 50 cars in the 50 day period, as well as daily prizes of cash and airtime.  The promotion gives an opportunity to its prepaid customers who achieve their targets on “5X bonus” to win one of the fifty cars, airtime worth Ksh. 2,000 or cash prize worth Ksh. 2,000.  5X bonus is a prepaid special offer where customers on the Airtel network have the opportunity to enjoy 500% airtime bonus on meeting a daily target on airtime used.

Airtel is now the third largest mobile operator in the world

Bharti Airtel today said that it has become the third largest mobile operator in the world in terms of subscribers. As per the latest data published by WCIS, Airtel with over 303 million mobile subscribers across its operations, has moved up one position in the global rankings.

Airtel began operations in November 1995 in New Delhi (India) and in less than two decades it has emerged as one of the top brands in the emerging markets with an unmatched scale and diversity of operations. The Company pioneered the low-cost business model based on outsourcing that has allowed it to expand its services rapidly and give customers affordable access to mobile telephony. 

Top Five Global Mobile Operators by Customers

Ranking	Operator	Wireless Mobile Connections (millions)*
1	China Mobile	626.27
2	Vodafone Group	403.08
3	Bharti Airtel	303.10
4	China Unicom	299.09
5	America Movil	274.14

(Source: World Cellular Information Service (WCIS) – As per their latest published global rankings)

Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman, Bharti Airtel, said, “This is a major landmark in the journey of Airtel and underlines the strength of our business model and our brand that is loved by customers across 20 countries.  Today, we seamlessly manage global scale operations in diverse geographies and deliver the same world-class services to each customers, this perhaps is one of our biggest achievements. I want to thank our employees and our business partners for supporting us through this exciting journey and with the mobile internet play about to happen in the developing world, things will only get brighter from here on.”

Airtel’s mobile networks cover over 1.85 billion^ people across its operations in 20 countries and carried over 1.23 trillion minutes of calls and over 333 petabytes of data in FY 2014-15.

In India, Airtel has one of the largest bouquet of mobile services offerings for customers - including 2G, 3G, 4G, Mobile Commerce and other Value Added Services. Its distribution channel is spread across 1.5 Mn outlets, with network presence in 5,121 census and 464,045 non-census towns and villages in India covering approximately 86.8% of the country’s population. Airtel has the largest rural mobile customer base in India with over 100 million mobile customers (from rural markets).

Airtel has India’s widest 3G footprint, offering customers high-speed internet access and a host of innovative services like Mobile TV, video calls, live-streaming videos and gaming. Airtel is the only mobile operator in India to offer 4G services in over 30 cities using TD - LTE & FDD - LTE technology, providing customers the fastest wireless services with buffer-less HD video streaming and multi-tasking capabilities. Going forward, Airtel plans to launch ultrafast 4G services in India’s first FDD‐LTE on 1800 MHz in 6 circles.

In Africa, Bharti Airtel is the largest mobile operator in the Continent in terms of geographical footprint.  It offers 2G, 3G services and Airtel Money across all 17 countries in Africa. Airtel Money is one of the largest and fastest growing m-commerce services on the continent and with data adoption leading the growth on the continent, Airtel is well positioned to leverage the opportunities.

In Bangladesh, Bharti Airtel is the fastest growing mobile operator, with a distribution network comprising over 146K retailers across the country. The company offers a wide range of 2G and 3G services in Bangladesh, including voice, value added services, entertainment, m-commerce and m-health.

In Sri Lanka, Bharti Airtel offers a range of mobile services which includes voice, data and enterprise solutions on its state-of-the-art 2G and 3G HSPA+ network. Airtel’s 3G presence across over 70% of its network is amongst the highest 3G ratio available across the subcontinent.