Xente is a platform where consumers can buy and pay for goods online. What started out as a business with two employees, operating out of a garage in 2012 has grown into a team of eighteen today. They have evolved a lot – as co-founder Allan Rwakatungu shares in this article, and as a result have grown and learned a lot. Allan was kind enough to speak to us about their journey and the lessons they have learned along the way.
On Starting the Business
Allan previously worked at MTN Uganda, particularly on the Mobile Money platform and he saw the potential it had to change the way business in Africa could be done. At the time, businesses here didn’t have many payment options – if you wanted to sell something online, PayPal couldn’t work because it didn’t serve Africa. He thought Mobile Money had the potential to be our PayPal and allow anyone to start a business and sell online.
“I became obsessed with this idea so much that I decided to leave my job in 2012 and started a company called Intel World. The idea was to help businesses get paid using Mobile Money.”
At the time it wasn’t easy to find these businesses. Allan and his team thought Betting companies would benefit from the idea of betting online and paying using Mobile Money and approached most of them. However, all of them turned them down because they didn’t think it would work. So Intel World decided to do it themselves. They got a Sports Betting licence and got into the betting business.
“However, that was not what I wanted to do with my life. I didn’t want to wake up every morning to get young people to gamble. So in 2015 we formed a breakaway company called Intel World International to solve the original problem which was to help businesses get paid using Mobile Money. We had also gotten quite good at building software so were building software for MTN, Airtel and the like.”
The big change for Allan came around 2016 when he traveled to South Africa looking for investment. The investor advised him to focus on one thing alone in order to get investment because he was being distracted by so many things – software, payments, etc.
“The investor advised him to focus on one thing alone in order to get investment because he was being distracted by so many things.”
“I remember finding it difficult to understand that because we were making money. Why should we focus on one thing alone?” Allan said, “However, we lost a big customer which woke us up and we decided to focus on the vision we had originally, which was to make it easy for any business to get paid using Mobile Money.”
On Evolution and Customer Feedback
Intel World was initially created to be a payment processing company. However, as they evolved, they pivoted to mainly providing a consumer product called Xente.
The idea behind Xente came as a result of interaction with their customers. Allan and his co-founder, Francis learned that a lot of businesses in Uganda just wanted to be able to sell. They didn’t care how the money came, they just wanted to sell.
“Their major problem wasn’t that they weren’t able to collect money off Mobile Money. They just wanted to be able to sell. This is what technology allows businesses to do. It allows businesses to reach a much wider market than they currently have.”
This is what Xente is about in a nutshell. It allows local businesses to sell more.
“The company was called Intel World and the product we were offering was called Xente, so we made it the same thing. We kept everything else the same – same team, same offices, we just changed the company name to Xente.”
Through Xente, Allan and his team promised businesses that they would be able to sell more, so they had to deliver on this promise.
“Our next challenge was finding the businesses these customers. That’s why we created the Xente App, to make it easy for consumers to buy and pay from any business online.”
They initially started with digital products, like airtime, data, and event tickets, vouchers etc. They are currently adding merchants who sell physical products like shoes, phones etc. As a consumer, you can pay with Mobile Money or with any bank that accepts Visa. You can also purchase any product in their catalog on credit.
“We are very similar to Jumia because we are trying to solve the same problem but are going about it in different ways. We are building a financial services layer on top of e-commerce,” Allan said, “The problem with e-commerce and why adoption is a bit slow is because there is no trust. We think this is because of the reliance on cash models even with e-commerce. You could order for a phone, pay with cash and the delivery isn’t ever made. So we are building a financial services layer to build trust into this process.”
On the Most Exciting Parts of the Journey
“The learning. I have learned a lot. I had absolutely no idea what business was when I started. All I had was this urge to create something.”
The most important learning in this whole journey for Allan has been on the importance of teams.
“The team is probably one of the most important things if you are going to succeed as a company. It isn’t the only predictor of success but it’s one of the ones you can control. You can’t control the market, timing, regulations or how an investor thinks but you can build a good team culture.”
The culture at Xente is to learn by doing. If you joined the team, don’t expect to be given easier tasks as you slowly grow into your role. Instead, you would be put in charge of a big project.
“We hire young people and throw them into the deep end. It’s amazing to see them swim after a few months. I find that people grow much quicker when you do that. They learn faster that way.”
Like most businesses, they have suffered their share of challenges with building teams. At the moment the biggest one is the fact that there is a lot of competition for talent, so retaining it isn’t easy.
“In our earlier years, the challenge was identifying the talent and training it. Now that we have grown from that, they are being poached and the challenge is how to retain the talent.”
To retain them, Allan tries to keep the work exciting.
“On top of this, we have to pay market prices which is difficult, but we don’t have much of a choice. We also give other incentives like giving people shares, performance bonuses etc. We basically have to be creative and intentional about keeping talented people.”
On the Most Challenging parts of the journey
“Living in constant uncertainty. You don’t know whether you have one month left, whether this client is going to throw you out or not. It’s all uncertain and it’s all on your shoulders as the leader. The future is bright but also very uncertain.”
Allan admits that he has no idea how they have survived for six years.
“There have been tough times, times we have gone for about 8 months with no salary. How do you eat, move, or basically live? We’ve died like five times but bounced back each time.”
On Resources Utilized
“We have been lucky with networks. I had friends who gave us money as well as family that chipped in. We also got an investor who gave us credibility for other investors to come on board. Once they did, it got a bit easier to attract others.”
On the One thing they did Well
Allan is glad they were resilient and creative enough to survive the perils of starting and growing a business. Even when their backs were against the wall and there was nothing else to do, something was pulled out of a hat.
“We refused to give up on the dream. Everyday we got up and worked regardless of the circumstances. There was no day we didn’t show up to work because things were hard. To this day, no matter what happens, we show up.”
“There was no day we didn’t show up to work because things were hard. To this day, no matter what happens, we show up.”
It is because of this resilience that they have grown from a team of 2 people in a garage in Kololo to 18 in an office in Ntinda.
On Biggest Mistakes and the Lessons Learned
Allan says they spent a lot of time following every opportunity that came by.
“We never said no. We would spend weeks writing proposals that weren’t in-line with what we primarily did. If we’d been able to understand what we were focusing on and had been able to say no, we’d have been further along at this point.”
On Lessons on Leadership
“I learned that my job as the leader was to get the best people around me then get out of their way,” he said.
Allan was also influenced by the book Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos. In the book, he says their mission at Zappos was to deliver happiness to their customers, employees, partners, etc.
“I was influenced by this because it made me think about what it actually meant to deliver happiness to everyone involved in our business. If a customer orders for something and you don’t deliver, they would obviously be unhappy. You don’t want your customers unhappy. You also don’t want your team or partners unhappy. So think of ways to keep them happy.”
To keep the team happy for example, Allan tries to make sure that people are excited about whatever they are working on. If they are excited about it, they’ll be happy to work on it.
“They should do work that excites them and fits their profile. You should also create a conducive environment to foster team happiness by doing things like providing lunch, having team outings etc.”
On Life Philosophy
“Find that sweet spot where your passion and what you do well meet. Once you find that, focus on that.”
“Find that sweet spot where your passion and what you do well meet and focus on that.”
What’s next for Xente?
“We are entering an interesting phase where the product is maturing and we need to hyper scale it. It requires a mind shift on my side and from the team as well. The App is past early adopters and we are now trying to become more mainstream.”
Would You Do it again?
“I would go about it differently. I still see problems that would be interesting to solve but I hope to become an investor and support young people solving these problems I am interested in.”
*Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice to Allan for sharing his story with us!