Leading customer experience platform, Ajua acquires Kenya based AI firm WayaWaya
Ajua, a Kenya-based consumer experience platform for businesses in Africa has today announced its acquisition of WayaWaya, a Kenya-based AI and ML messaging company.
Wayawaya is well known for its innovative Janja platform that enables borderless banking and payments across apps and social media platforms, for an undisclosed sum.
This undisclosed acquisition will see WayaWaya founder and lead product builder, Teddy Ogallo join Ajua as the VP of Product and Integrations.
As an intelligent messaging bot, Janja helps businesses and individuals with messaging solutions across several social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, amongst others.
It helps businesses automate customer support and receive cross-border payments. WayaWaya’s customers and partners include the likes of I&M Bank, Interswitch, and MTN.
The acquisition of WayaWaya allows Ajua to integrate Janja to automate much of the customer experience journey by integrating janja.me product into their product stack.
Thereby bridging the customer experience loop as the smart AI and ML built by WayaWaya gives SMEs the ability to automate responses and give the customer what they want, when they want it.
Ajua was founded in 2012 by Kenfield Griffith, the company formerly known as mSurvey was established to solve the customer experience gap for businesses on the continent to drive business growth.
Ajua combines technology with the customer experience and has built several innovative products that deliver real-time customer feedback at the point of service, for small and large businesses across Africa, powering customer experiences for businesses with over 45M customers. Current Ajua partners and clients include GoodLife Pharmacy, Standard Chartered, FBNQuest, Safaricom, Total, Coca-Cola, and Java House.
The acquisition of WayaWaya is coming a month after Ajua announced its partnership with a telecom provider, MTN to launch an innovative customer management product for Nigerian businesses.
The product called MTN EnGauge is an agile application that offers innovative customer management solutions. The platform enables businesses to access digital payments using a unique USSD code, CRM tools, customer feedback channels, debt management and tracking, business, and product promotions through mobile and social media channels.
Through its new product roll-out with MTN, Ajua is generating more data for its thousands of users, much of which can now be better automated and monetized through the products and services WayaWaya has built, including cross-border digital transfers, payments services, and intelligent finance bots.
Teddy Ogallo (Founder, WayaWaya) & Kenfield Griffith (CEO, Ajua)
Commenting on the acquisition, CEO and founder of Ajua, Kenfield Griffith says the acquisition of WayaWaya is an important milestone for Ajua as they strive to make customer experiences for business a seamless affair.
“Integrating WayaWaya’s technology significantly complements our product suite and gives us the ability to automate our clients’ businesses and grow their revenues, which is an extremely powerful proposition for our customers of all sizes, across Africa. From our experience in this area, we understand the CX fundamentals that drive growth for our customers and we want to bring this intelligence to SMEs across the continent.”
He also added that this acquisition will allow Ajua to scale significantly within the SME vertical and provide their customers and clients with the tools they need to grow in Africa and beyond. Emphasizing that customer experience and customer engagement is the twin ingredient for business growth across the continent.
“We continue to be bullish on the point that customer experience and customer engagement are the engine for growth for businesses across the continent and they are disciplines that are critical factors in driving productivity and revenue growth”.
Teddy Ogallo, founder of WayaWaya and new VP of Product APIs and Integrations for Ajua confessed that his admiration of Ajua’s business model influenced him to accede to the acquisition and join the team.
“Ajua’s focus on introducing and scaling customer service and customer experience for the continent – and essentially how they help businesses deliver excellence for their customers – is something my team and I have long admired.”
Stressing that “Seeing how WayaWaya’s technology can complement Ajua’s innovative products and services, and help scale and monetize businesses, is an exciting opportunity for us, and we are happy that our teams will be collaborating to build something unique for the continent”.
The SME market in Nigeria alone is valued at $220 billion annually and projections reveal that businesses with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) have bolstered their productivity by 40 percent.
Ajua uses data and analytics to connect companies with their customers in real-time, thereby helping them better understand the nature of their customers and subsequently increase sales through smarter experiences.
This is the second big acquisition to happen this year after Ghana’s Zeepay acquired Zambian mobile money operator Mangwee. This trend portends a bright future for the tech ecosystem as cross-country acquisitions and collaborations will improve efficiency and provide market access for startups.