Mocality aims to be 'largest business-directory in sub-Saharan Africa'

13 Jul 2010

If you're in downtown Nairobi before the 4th of August, be sure to pop into the Barber Q Hair Studio and get yourself a free head massage. The studio is on the 2nd Floor of El-Roi Plaza, close to the Odeon Cinema. This is just one example of the thousands of snippets of information that are at the heart of Mocality, a free-to-list, hyper-local mobile business directory in Nairobi, Kenya.

Mocality aims to be 'largest business-directory in sub-Saharan Africa'

Mocality offers a free business suite of tools to all listed businesses, such as the ability to upload customer mobile numbers into the Mocality platform, a free mobile website and 400 free SMSes each month to message their customers about new products and promotions.

Mocality's CEO Stefan Magdalinksi sees Mocality as becoming "the largest, most successful, business directory in sub-Saharan Africa by expanding the market via internet technology to include millions of businesses that previously never appeared in a directory, offline or online."

The business is based in South Africa and is part of the Naspers stable, but they took a strategic decision to begin operations in May 2009 in Nairobi, for a number of reasons. As Magdalinski explains, "Kenya's a good place for doing business, has good internet penetration and a lot of mobile phones. Also, it has M-PESA, the mobile money platform, which makes paying our agent network very easy."

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Source: Memeburn

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