Winning a mobile licence anywhere in the world could be a function of just cash and more cash to throw around. Winning the same in an environment like Nigeria, a country awakening from an absence of due process to the new realities of business unusual comes with challenges the winner only gets to know about upon stepping onto the soil. But coming in when it seems there is nothing else available to grab demands exceptional strategies to justify the investments made. Here’s what Etisalat Nigeria did to emerge a success in such a tough terrain. By MKPE ABANG
Surviving in the Lion’s Den
Investing in Nigeria is like taking a blind aim in a wild and thick forest and expecting to hit the target – a fast running iguana – at first strike; speaking literally and literarily, this would be an effort in futility, one that any investor would turn away from and never think of turning back or giving it a second thought.
Nigeria! It is a challenging market in spite of its large – and ever growing – population. Many say despite the huge potentials, Nigeria presents perhaps the toughest challenges on the African continent – for investment and doing business in whatever field.
When therefore, the telecommunications operator in the United Arab Emirates, Etisalat, with its headquarters in the capital, Abu Dhabi, took out $400 million and acquired a licence, in 2007, to operate mobile telephony business in Nigeria, not a few thought the company’s owners, Mubadala and its Nigerian associates with whom they had jointly registered the Emerging Markets Telecommunications Services (EMTS), must be crazy.
So wary and sceptical were many around the world that even the apparently seeming success of two earlier mobile operators – MTN and Econet (later VMobile then Celtel and now Airtel), was not enough to convince them. After all, the road to El Dorado, the mythical city of gold, was still too murky and strewn with innumerably tough challenges that the government appeared to be doing nothing convincing to clear up.
They point to the public power grid, which continued – and still continues – to get from point of hope to point of utter hopelessness; they point to the security situation in Blackman’s most populous country, which the government seemed incapable of dealing with; they point to a sudden eruption of several portfolio ‘experts’ who form a new cabal of inimical forces that advise regional governments too much in need of internally generated revenue to shore up their lean grants from the centre, on how to practically skin the mobile operators alive – with countless taxes never before dreamt of. The challenges seemed insurmountable; yet, they keep piling up.
The cost of doing business among government institutions is astronomical – coated in one word: corruption. And, this doesn’t appear to be in a hurry to go away. The market is therefore described by many across the world as the Lion’s Den of investment. Unlike the Biblical Daniel, who walked out of the Lion’s Den alive, not many investors have the stomach to jump into this den infested by more than just lions, to pour in their hard earned money.
But, to the Lion’s Den, Etisalat not only headed in 2007 with a princely $400 million to acquire a mobile phone licence, the company made good its promise to begin operations in the country a year later.
It sounded inexplicably confusing at the time. Here was a market that the initial winners of licences at the mobile phone auction six years earlier had paid $285 million, in 2001; and, here was Etisalat paying $115 million over and above that initial licence sum – a hefty premium! Some people even said it in muted comments: that the Arabs have so much money from oil they didn’t seem to know what to do with it anymore, hence the sinking of such amount in Nigeria for a mobile licence six years after two serious operators had got a head start; and were struggling to survive due to the tall challenges in the market.
But Etisalat and its promoters saw beyond the challenges; they saw the opportunities, the potentials and the apparently endless streaming of revenue in the country – if only the right investment, the right business model and the right team were put in place. And, the company went for all the above full blast.
Beginning operations in October 2008, Etisalat Nigeria was watched by the ‘let’s wait and see’ crowd, both within and outside the country with unconcealed cynicism. Not many gave it a chance to go beyond the first 24 months; in fact, there were people who thought the company would beat a quick retreat within 12 to 18 months.
But what did we have within that same period that the company was predicted to fold up owing to the challenges and a market that some thought had already become saturated: a company that from the first blast of the whistle became renowned for innovative products, services and offerings that immediately endeared it to both subscribers of existing operators and the new ones, who began to flock to the network – for a taste of what became the quality service to cherish.
And so it is that today, in just six full years of operations, Etisalat Nigeria has become a major industry player with a growing subscriber base of over 22 million in a highly competitive, challenging even if potentially explosive market – Nigeria.
Its portfolio of voice and data-centric products, which include easy starter, easycliq, easybusiness, and easyblaze, designed and tailor-made to meet the needs of its customers, have something that keeps competition wondering where this company gets the kick for all these ideas. And, for the subscriber, it’s a new dawn – a dawn for demanding the most innovative service and receiving services at the most promising quality level from a mobile operator in Nigeria.
It seems clearly that this is a message Etisalat set out to pass to its subscribers, a target it set out to achieve, a focus it beams its searchlights upon and a horizon the company is bent on being a leader upon; and, there’s no stopping Etisalat Nigeria in this pursuit for excellence.
Etisalat Nigeria is one of the 19 operations of the Etisalat Group that spans Africa, the Middle East and Asia serving over 185 million subscribers; and it is committed to delivering innovative and quality services to its growing subscribers.
So, just how does the company turn on the magic that gives it this winning charm?