Podcast : Why should utilities be seeking out partnerships with companies a fraction of their size?
Digital innovations start small but can make a serious contribution to both revenue and bottom lines apart from making possible universal access to services.
Innovative young companies, using mobile and digital technologies, are developing businesses that deliver basic services to poor people in emerging countries. A challenge fund run by GSMA Mobile for Digital Utilities Innovation Fund, supported by international donors has sparked off innovation that has attracted global talent and capital.
In the last episode, George Kibala Bauer, Director Digital Utilities, GSMA talked about the types of businesses and their relative successes and challenges. In this episode, we will talk about how partnerships between small and large organizations have helped these businesses grow and impact millions of lives.
It is easy to understand that small companies will benefit from partnering with large organizations who have large numbers of paying customers and cash to invest. However, large companies benefit significantly as well. They get access to innovative technologies that augment their current offering, new revenue streams and access to new customer segments.
These large organizations have responded in various ways. Some of them have been content to partner with innovative companies who have pitched to them. Some of them (such as MTN and water utilities in Bangladesh and Kenya) have gone out and searched for partnerships. Orange has gone further in some countries: integrated the offering into their organizations.
And they have splashed out money. Safaricom, Kenya’s largest telecommunication company, has acquired a cooking company and Engie, a French multinational utility company, has acquired companies providing solar home systems in rural areas.
Public utilities have also partnered with mobile operators to collect real time data and with smaller private companies to extend their services. Governments are using data generated from these services to channel subsidies more effectively.
Listen to George Kibala Bauer, Director Digital Utilities, GSMA in this second episode as he reflects on how businesses are using mobile and digital technologies in using technologies to deliver basic services in emerging water. Innovative companies must seek out partners as the mobile companies have customer acceptance. But it is also the responsibility of the larger companies to use technologies to help communities come out of poverty and help nations reach climate goals. Public organizations must actively support private initiatives as it is not possible for nations to “out entrepreneur themselves out of property”
“Cities should be engines of prosperity, not traps of poverty.”
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