I just stumbled across a transcript of Kinnevik’s Q2 2016 results earnings call. It’s a 31-page read, but one of the insights I gleaned from it was that Kinnevik values their 34% stake in Konga at SEK101 million (Swedish Krona), that’s $11.6 million. Back of the napkin math tells me that if 34% of the company is worth $11.6 million, then (throws napkin away and opens calculator app) the company’s worth $34 million. It was also revealed that they’ve got 184,000 active customers, 80% of which access the site via a mobile device. Wait, what?
This is really sobering stuff. In a country of 180m people, Konga has only managed 184,000 active customers pic.twitter.com/sV6BiLvCyn
— tyro (@DoubleEph) July 27, 2016
For context, that’s around 0.1% of Nigeria’s population. The reason I’m not very surprised is that at the last Africabeta, Ope Adeoye from Interswitch said that there are only 200,000 active cards in Nigeria, as opposed to 97 million internet users. Even though internet subscription numbers look large, the addressable market for many of the services being built over here is MUCH smaller than is apparent. Toh.
One more thing. I reckon Konga has raised around $78 million till date. Compare that with their 184,000 active users, and you’ll find that the cost per acquisition is $424. Yup. At today’s official rates (since Grandmaster Buhari and his side-kick Emefiele are always right), that means that you cost around Konga ₦133,500.
https://twitter.com/opeadeoye/status/758266532740886529
One more thing (I mean it this time). Konga’s monthly page view count cannot be anywhere as low as 184000. I don’t agree. It’s obvious that people are using online services (not just Konga) as directories before making their purchases elsewhere. Come online, window-shop, then go and buy the product elsewhere. On another day, we’ll talk about how distrust in online payments platforms contributes to all this. 🙂
Source – Kinnevik [pdf]
