This is a Power 98.7 Podcast. Now, we're talking. Subscribe to Power 98.7 Podcasts in iTunes, wherever you get your podcasts. There's more on power987.co.zade. This is your world. Power 98.7. Now, we're talking.
All right, 22 minutes to 8 o'clock here in Power Business, the Tuesday edition of the show. And around this time, we get into our small business feature. And tonight, on our small business Tuesday, we have the privilege of speaking with Manland Mobile, a visionary entrepreneur and founder of Aversiloret.
Now established in 2013, a seller, it has rapidly grown into a leading provider of internet connectivity services across South Africa, reaching even the most remote areas through strategic partnerships and major industry players. And Mantla joins us now on the line on power business business to tell us more about it. Mantla, very good evening and welcome to the program. Good evening to you and your listeners.
I guess tell us, you know, accelerate this business founded in 2013, rapidly growing since then. Tell us about what started it all. Simply put, it was a need for connectivity. So we've always, in person, my focus has always been in identifying areas of need and lack of supply.
Celeridge was essentially born out of bed because through my exposure, I identified key areas like multi-planning units in student communities where you would find that there's connectivity at risk. But as soon as people move out of risk and they don't have connectivity, we started tinkering around with those buildings, articulating them, essentially turning them into hotspots. And yeah, so they evolved into being full company that is now today known as accelerates and servicing our users nationwide.
Indeed, necessity being the mother of all invention. Now, Mandla, I want to know then, what motivated you to become an entrepreneur? And were there any sort of particular influences or mentors who really shaped your path? Yeah, so I think more than anything, being an entrepreneur, in my case, it was about
doing what I want whenever I want it to do. It's waking up, going to sleep and in between, essentially doing what it is I want, and ensuring that it's also fulfilling. It's one thing doing a job that pays really well, but in between you're not really enjoying it. You're looking forward to the weekend, you're looking forward to the December break, you're looking forward to going on leave.
So that's a life that I wasn't really happy with, and that's essentially what motivated me into focusing, as I say, in identifying what it is that would fulfill into me, and then just doubling down on that. And then from a role model perspective, my parents, very, very good role models from the perspective that they didn't have much, but with whatever little that they had, they were able to provide for the family
And yeah, interestingly enough, both of them also self-employed. So I guess, you know, that sort of spot that a thing in me to focus in that entrepreneurship. Yeah, definitely keeping it in the family. And Mandla then talked us about the early days in of a silhouette in, you know, in 2013. What did those early days look like? And what were the biggest hurdles in that you were facing?
So that's a nice, fully went on to essentially focus on the company, but the company was registered in 2011. So that meant juggling. I think the most difficult thing before you actually, if you are employed and you're looking to branch off, is there's going to be a period where you are doing a day job, but at night or, you know, when you take time off, leave subvertical, you then focus on your ventures. So I think that period
is essentially the most challenging period as you're transitioning, because the comfort of you getting a salary, and there's these comforts of you having to do this other thing that needs you to be there on a weekend, that needs you to be there when you're meant to be resting essentially on vacation, you know, just balancing that and getting it right. There is more often than not enough scenery with some of the other guys with
You know, the comfort is tempting. You get drawn back into, you know, so the existing is looking at starting, but you're getting a salary and you're comfortable, then you essentially just default back into that salary mode. Yeah, so I mean, you know, that pretty much from a challenge perspective, first stage perspective is what you go through. And then secondly, once you've now decided, okay, I'm going to leave my day job. There is no longer the salary.
say, this thing that you're starting out, you're not ending enough from it. How do you scale it? Remember, because you're still relatively new in the industry. Your name isn't really well known. So the banks don't really trust you. They're not going to extend the capacity of debt to you. So you can expand the business. You have to establish yourself with whatever little you have. So just building from there on. So essentially a good easy five to seven years of just grinding.
and leveraging your savings quite heavily. And also those that are close to, you know, if you don't have a working business model in that seven years, because you definitely need to draw on something and you need to go into it prepared.
Yeah, definitely. And talk to us then, because it sounds like, you know, you were pouring in, as you were working, you were pouring into the business to, you know, sort of get it going because of those challenges around sort of securing maybe the capital that you wanted. But what role did networking and partnerships play in the growth of a celerate during the startup phase? Yeah, and that's what I cannot, you know, it starts when you're still employed.
essentially you start building a profile of A, so you know your work for a particular company, there are people that work with you who eventually become your early investors in your business. So the image that you put free, it isn't to say that because one day you want to start a business that you can behave however you want, where you're employed, you have to make sure that there is consistency.
So that energy that you want to be remembered by when you leave the company that you work for, the same energy that you want to carry into your new venture, you have to make sure that it's consistently present. Because then it makes things a lot easier for you when you have lived over. And in some instances, you need to go back and knock on doors, familiar doors that you may have come across in the past.
And also just when people see you and they remember you for what you represented when you worked with them. So a good example is for me, I worked at Accenture, South Africa, which is essentially a very multinational consulting firm. And eventually, after founding the business, which is accelerates, they became one of my clients. So I think networking has got to start when you're still employed. And it's very, very important. Whether you employed or whether
in school, university, you must always be thinking about the relationships that you formulate and the fact that at some point in the future either you will meet those people or they will meet you and definitely that door must be open.
And definitely speaking of Accenture, you landed a significant deal managing Accenture South Africa's nationwide connectivity network in 2020. Tell us about how that sort of partnership came to fruition and the effect it had on your business.
So, you know, as I say, through the exposure, we never lost touch. I never lost touch with extension. So, whenever I would be invited to come and either do a talk or when they would have seminars about small businesses, I would attend those. So, I made sure to stay very close to my ex colleagues who was still essentially based
at Accenture and through that, you know, there's obviously the lunch breaks, right? And you get to talk, what do you do? What, you know, what can, what it is you do? What can it do for us at Accenture? A, we've got this problem that we are solving.
And at some point, they were moving to new premises for more need to waterfall. And I think there was an opportunity for us essentially to approach them into looking at their connectivity requirements, these new premises, and to see how we could essentially play a role there. So we're not the only provider, but we are among the panel of providers for connectivity.
connecting their local business to its international subsidiaries essentially. But yeah, I think from a transformation perspective, you know, a deal like that does open a few more doors for you if you are an emerging entity. Because as I said, when the interview started, that credibility is very important.
regular credit is important. And if you don't have that, you're not going to get money from the banks. You're not going to, you know, essentially heaven and that extension, if you may, where businesses would trust you with essential, because connectivity is very essential. You know, I think it's one of those things that if it's done, especially around COVID, find that if that, if you can't connect,
Everyone is working from home. You can't connect to head office. You can't connect to your international counterparts, essentially, then your business grants are off. So something like that really, really, really needs you to be firmly established and a partner-like extension. It opened those doors for us because they could not only give us the deal, but they were willing to also spend with us in front of some of the presentations that we were making, some of the larger entities that we now have on our books.
And that's fantastic, really, you know, in terms of how that all panned out. But talk just because you've also got, you've formed other partnerships, you know, with the major industry players like a liquid towel, a Seacom and a Metrofiber. How did these relationships come about and what impact have they had on your growth? I think from the ones you mentioned, Seacom definitely stands out because not only are we a customer,
with CCOM, but it's more partnership. So, you know, it's one of those where it was a meeting of minds. They really came into the business and looked at what it is we're doing in the area where we're doing providing connectivity.
So venturing into, and they became essentially a partner because they also acquired a business which essentially allowed them connectivity through out of Africa, including remote towns. So if you know anything about us, our focus is on underserved communities. We focus very heavily on that, whether it is, as I had initially said, student communities where you find that if you embrace, you connect it, but as soon as you step out, you don't have connectivity. Therefore, you need to stay in residence at late at night,
you know, trying to figure out how to solve a problem like that to go into a, you know, small town, quite an ongoing, for example, that doesn't have connectivity, but almost every other person has got a smartphone, but no one wants to go and deploy connectivity there because the cost is too high. You know, us going into those type of communities, working out of business case, because even though you're doing, you're connecting underserved communities,
What is important to us is to make sure that these things are backed by viable and commercial business cases. So, you know, with them having a rich in some of the remote towns across South Africa, it became one of those, you know, relationships that were beneficial. So they could benefit from the service that we were offering and we could also benefit benefit through the rich.
That relationship will still have it till today as we expand into more and more remote towns. We continue building fire into those towns, figuring out how to commercialize them, figuring out how to ensure that the residency value in our offering and can afford, most importantly, can afford the offering, right? So, you know, these are challenges that we solve every day. So that's why I say, you know,
It's the partnership mentioned, I think they specifically stand out because we continue to put a lot of work with them in that regard. All right, and then talk to us then, you know, on that note then, talk to us about the current industry trends relating to connectivity as well as AI.
Yeah, so from a connectivity perspective, some of you can start here at home. What we think now is a lot of the leafy stuff that's just been connected. And so to make sense, some of the secondary cities have also been connected to the likes of Abu Blumfantihin, you know, Pizzamari's back and those cycles, cities of sort of connectivity. So they're trying to now shifting more towards
a rural underserved, essentially. So there's a big drive now, looking into those areas and how we make them commercially viable enough for us to put infrastructure on the ground. So that's essentially from a current perspective. And that's currently our focus. A lot of the players in South Africa have slowed down from a lot of perspective. And some of them have started exploring international expansion, essentially.
And for us, it is important that we still focus here at home and not only, you know, being driven by crazy evidence, you know, from a revenue perspective, but also just looking at how do we remain impactful? So we want to get into communities that are underserved. We want to remain commercially viable enough to service the debt that we've got in our books, but also be able to
provide connectivity not so that we are so from an evidence perspective, making earnings upwards of 60%, but just for you to be sustainable enough to continue rolling out and expanding the business. So there's definitely a big trend in getting into those hard storage areas and where AI plays a critical role.
is because when you start doing rent, it means you're going to spend a lot more on infrastructure. And potentially your returns initially may not be as lucrative as they would be in areas where from what we call an apple, which essentially just means how much on average I charge each subscriber a month. So if that drops, because you now maybe instead of charging 1,000 rounds a month, you're now charging 400 rounds a month, how do you make up for the difference? Right?
From a workforce perspective, you must be looking at efficiencies. So by efficiencies, what we mean is as we grow, we don't want a one-to-one type of relationship. So as I'm growing my, if I've got 10 people working for the business and I've got 10 subscribers, I don't necessarily want to end up with 20 people for 20 subscribers. So you want to squeeze in some efficiencies. And it means there's got to be a level of automation, right?
And that's why a really artificial intelligence starts playing a critical role where some of the queries that we encounter on a day-to-day basis, especially those which are repetitive in nature, they do not need a person responding to them daily. So you can take those tasks and feed them to some kind of boards, which is one point with your internal processes, and it is able to respond probably much quicker than a person would.
And it can do this during the day at night, over the weekend, Christmas day, 24-7. So really, I think that when you talk about connectivity or the workforce and leveraging AI, there are immense benefits. And some of those which translates directly to the end user as a benefit in terms of how much we charge for the service.
All right, then, looking then at the benefits of AI, talk to us about what sort of new trends in are we expecting in the AI space? A lot of it. And a lot of the guys would have said, I think this week is the pathway that's been deep-sick. I think everyone is talking about deep-sick. We're talking about chat TPT, talking about NGBaches, Plummets. But basically, all this, since it is the fact that
there will be a heavy level of automation going forward. So I cannot think of an industry that isn't exploring artificial intelligence at the moment. So there was the first phase of it, which was, you know, you're training models with the data, so historical data, you're training them to sort of anticipate based on historical patterns what will happen next.
But there is now the deductive versions, which are things like deep seek I essentially are. So those will say, OK, I've seen enough of this person for me to be alive, even something that has never been taught. But for me to sort of get to a conclusion that says that the next logical action will be y, if you've given me x in the person, I've seen it happen enough number of times. So essentially what that means, right, is that in
Imagine at accelerates, you come in to acquire a service and you are legally browsing on TikTok and you see the sports and it starts engaging you and you tell it what your needs are and it's responding to you and it's literally scouring the web. It's also using what it has launched based on what has happened in the past to a point where it's able to send you a seven at night if you're in TikTok at midnight. It is able to close the deal
It even takes you all the way to a payment. So when we come in in the morning, we just processing your order. If we take it a step further, it means we then integrate that to our partners who will deliver the service. So when you wake up, you're getting a call. We're coming to install the line for you. So from a trans perspective, it means you have probably have got to be learning
if you're in an industry, especially in the space like call sensors, a very ripe for disruption, because that is an area where the ports really, really excel. They can sell in a way that a human can't. They can provide support services in a way that a human cannot. And it's not just because of the width, but it's also because these things are the 24-7.
A lot of the industries are looking to adopt it. You've got to be learning a little bit about AI in whatever job it is you gain unless you think you're a plumber and you're probably safe unless there is a role within the future that will maybe come in and also look to disrupt you. But yeah, I think a lot of people are looking into that and a lot of business owners are definitely looking into AI from an efficiency perspective because we want to automate as much as possible and gain the efficiencies thereafter.
All right, well, it really does sound like the future is bright. There's a lot to look forward to. And I guess a lot of disruption that we can expect in the coming years. No, 100%. Even this show, so there's interestingly enough a show that was launched not so long ago where it's literally even from even the voice, right? So you go in and you train it with your voice. It's this agent.
I mean, maybe after I show you can just look it up. So this agent that you can train simplifies is your voice. And based on how you talk based on what you have done historically. And it can go to an archive of interviews like this. And you can tell it that, okay, scripts, this, I'm going to be a discussion between
I found that accelerates and myself and it can do the entire show. If you're in the street. Oh, you know what? We're going to have to leave that conversation there. I feel like you're just erupting things over here on this side. Mindless, it's been a pleasure engaging with you this evening. We're going to leave it there. But thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you.
All right, that was a Madeline Morbo founder at Accelerate, speaking to us for our Small Business Tuesday segment.