Earlier quoted context omitted.
A couple of months ago. I didn't do much though, just had to drive around the area.
Ah, right. Have you any connections in the country?
No.
Ask HN: Which developing nations have interesting tech stories at the moment?
81–90 of 127 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which developing nations have interesting tech stories at the moment?
#82There's some pretty exciting stuff happening in the startup scene in Nigeria, most famously Zuckerberg's PR visit to Lagos a few months ago. Konga (a Nigerian company) is trying to upset Joomla (a South African company) to become the Amazon of Africa, and co-working spaces are starting to sprout all over the place. There are over a hundred different mobile payment solutions, not just in the micro-payment sector, but…
> Konga (a Nigerian company) is trying to upset Joomla (a South African company) to become the Amazon of Africa, and co-working spaces are starting to sprout all over the place. I think you meant Jumia instead of Joomla, and it's also a Nigerian company. The South African company that seems to usually be mentioned in the same breath as these two and Amazon is Takealot.com which is a South African company.
Jumia is not a Nigerian company. It was founded by a Nigerian and Ghanaian duo but acquired by Rocket Internet a while ago
Re: Ask HN: Which developing nations have interesting tech stories at the moment?
#83India | Telecom | 110M subscribers on-boarded in 100 days To summarize: Jio, which is our cellular telephony play, now is the world's largest cellular data network (pumping 22,000 TB per day) and onboards a million customers a day! We now have 110 million subscribers (in ~100 days). This became possible when the telco regulators here gave a go ahead to use the Govt of India's pet biometric auth project Aadhaar[1] to…
+1 for Jio entry. So far existing vendors like airtel,vodafone are robbing customers. We used to pay 250Rs(~4usd) for 1GB 3G/4G data. Now with Jio entries, prices came down to 30GB/250rs. Benefits the end-user.
Re: Ask HN: Which developing nations have interesting tech stories at the moment?
#84I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Tunisia. Its main advantage is that the country produces SF-grade engineers for 10% of the cost. https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/11/tunisia-is-becoming-mena-n... https://www.wamda.com/2015/11/why-accelerators-are-flocking-... http://www.tunisia-live.net/2015/07/10/tunisia-start-up/ Some nuance: https://medium.com/@ostl/tunis-as-a-startup-city-or-not-2d4d...
I'd love to put this to the test. Do you happen to know of any good places to advertise our open developer positions there?
Hey how can I contact you?
Re: Ask HN: Which developing nations have interesting tech stories at the moment?
#85Kenya has a very budding startup scene, mostly innovative ways of offering financial services to the unbanked: https://www.quora.com/What-are-interesting-startups-in-Kenya http://www.innovationiseverywhere.com/kenya-startup-scene/
My first SE Daily interview was with one of the co-founders of mymookh.com. Kenya is definitely a leading nation in the mobile payments space.
M-Pesa, which may have first been created there (not sure, just read of it used there first), is now in India too.
Re: Ask HN: Which developing nations have interesting tech stories at the moment?
#86India | Telecom | 110M subscribers on-boarded in 100 days To summarize: Jio, which is our cellular telephony play, now is the world's largest cellular data network (pumping 22,000 TB per day) and onboards a million customers a day! We now have 110 million subscribers (in ~100 days). This became possible when the telco regulators here gave a go ahead to use the Govt of India's pet biometric auth project Aadhaar[1] to…
I will be downvoted for saying this: Most of the subscribers were issued 5 sims per aadhar number.In that sense its really around 20 million subscribers each with around 5 sims in their name.And anybody can be sure that they aren't using all the issued sims.Also most of the subscribers have stopped using the sims after the freebies was called off.
I don't think HN would downvote you for having an alternative datapoint. =)
That said, you are right to a degree but the only multiple sim holding report I saw was Truecaller saying that 46% of its installs are people with dual sims. This was last year. I'd love to hear about your sources and proxies about 5.
That said, there are multiple longer run plays here:
- onboarding 1M/SIMs/day.
- pumping that much data volume/day.
- commoditisation of data packs.
- this is just the data layer of digital infra, value layers over this would be built in next 2-5 years. It is a sub percentage point of GDP growth if you measure not just the ARPU that Jio makes, but what every business makes here on top of this.
- productivity growth is hard to measure in terms of short run revenue of one company. This is digital infrastructure akin to roadways, railroads and electricity.
Re: Ask HN: Which developing nations have interesting tech stories at the moment?
#87India | Telecom | 110M subscribers on-boarded in 100 days To summarize: Jio, which is our cellular telephony play, now is the world's largest cellular data network (pumping 22,000 TB per day) and onboards a million customers a day! We now have 110 million subscribers (in ~100 days). This became possible when the telco regulators here gave a go ahead to use the Govt of India's pet biometric auth project Aadhaar[1] to…
An interesting article on Jio from The Economist: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21718495-jios-100m-ne... By their math, acquiring those 100 million customers cost 25 billion USD. The writer is sceptical that Jio will ever make that money back. Personally I think it's awesome that an Indian billionaire is spending his money on local digital infrastructure. Even if Jio doesn't become hugely profitable, its net…
They beta tested the sim cards only on their own Lyf branded phones which are some of the cheapest 4G phones available. They plan on releasing more phones, an FTTH broadband service, they already have movies and music streaming services, they have small portable wifi hotspot devices, there's news that they'll enter the D2H TV service market too. I think they'll make their money back with a combination of the hardware and services.
The competition has been the biggest boon for the public even more so than the services they're offering, forced every major network to lower their prices which I hope will have a good long term effect for the public.
Re: Ask HN: Which developing nations have interesting tech stories at the moment?
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Konga (a Nigerian company) is trying to upset Joomla (a South African company) to become the Amazon of Africa, and co-working spaces are starting to sprout all over the place. I think you meant Jumia instead of Joomla, and it's also a Nigerian company. The South African company that seems to usually be mentioned in the same breath as these two and Amazon is Takealot.com which is a South African company.
Jumia is not a Nigerian company. It was founded by a Nigerian and Ghanaian duo but acquired by Rocket Internet a while ago
Wikipedia says[1] Jumia is headquartered in Lagos and also:
In 2012, Jumia Group was launched with the
support of Rocket Internet, MTN, and Millicom.
In March 2016, Jumia Group secured over €300M
of funding from MTN, Rocket Internet, AXA,
Goldman Sachs, Orange and CDC
Re: Ask HN: Which developing nations have interesting tech stories at the moment?
#89I live in Palestine, and I see tech sector is growing crazy. We have a couple of Startups who are doing great and we have a VC and funds. It never been better to be honest.
I am sure you will find a lot of resources about Tech sector in Palestine.
Re: Ask HN: Which developing nations have interesting tech stories at the moment?
#90Vietnam has quite a strong startup ecosystem relative to its development stage. I think it has a lot to do with its government having laid out a plan since the 90s to develop its IT industry. Results are: 1) Lots of IT grads 2) Lots of funding 3) Okay-ish infrastructure If we add this to the interests in entrepreneurship among Vietnamese people, it results in a strong tech scene.
I'm from Vietnam and working on IT sections, thank you very much for the interested in. Yes, we are the developing country, lack a lot of conditions like developed countries, but we are on going ahead to cover and catching up with you, especial in internet, robotic, saas, e-comercial, social intranet and maybe AI too. Our company working as technology transfer company (Web Company). We are the partner of Bitrix24 in Asia for 10 years and on working as distribute and develope custom features base on Bitrix24 Platform (Social Intranet 2.0 for enterprises). Hoping have a lot of help from you, especial the support from the mature in working method (management, quality, refined, etc..)