Mwaniki Ng’atia, one of the Founders of pnpRadius lets us know the Business behind the tech. Have a read.
Building a Software as a Service product that actually generates revenue in Kenya is no easy task. Mwaniki and his team have managed to make this a reality with pnpRadius while helping entrepreneurs in the internet resale market. Read his story below.
Hi Mwaniki, what’s your background and what has been your career?
Hi, my name is Mwaniki Ngatia, you can call me Joe. I have a background in Electrical Controls and Instrumentation, but the only thing I’ve practiced as far as that is concerned is Electrical and electronics.
My tech journey started in an interesting way, I started by being a Kenyan Sign Language interpreter and this opened up my world of leadership. I was poached to be a co-founder in an NGO for the Deaf, where we worked to promote inclusivity and talent in the Deaf community. I did this for about 3 years.
Due to the community around me, the problems I learned about while supporting the Deaf community and my background in electronics I decided to venture into IoT, and co-founded a startup around that. This led to building some cool stuff and landed me in the world of connectivity, which is where my work had been for the past 3-4 years.
What are you working on currently and how did the idea come up?
Our start-up is called Tawa Innovate Limited. It is a software company where we build custom solutions for different problems using technology.
We share the philosophy with a sister startup on building solutions for Africa by Africa using Technology.
Currently we are working on an Enterprise tool that is a billing and automation software for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) called PNP-Radius.
In the last few years, we have seen small independent ISPs (Internet Sevice Providers) mushrooming in almost every neighborhood in a major city/town, this is characterized by the demand for internet services, especially in the middle class, who can afford to have up to a certain level of disposable income.
This phenomenon exploded with COVID-19, and many ISPS are now online and providing their services. There were and still are ISP entrepreneurs selling internet data packages in every neighborhood but perform their operations manually and our tools help them offer quality and reliable internet, that is similar to that of big brand telcos and providers.
How did you build it? (tools and resources used)
As a business founder first, my priority is the market need which we call the problem or opportunity, and technology is a means to this end.
The solution is a Software as a Service, build on top of an open-source RADIUS infrastructure. It is linked to the Network through Mikrotik Router, utilizing the robust RouterOS capabilities. Our amazing team of software engineers works on the tech side of the business.
How did you get your first customers/users?
Our product is B2B, we were at the right place at the right time because the demand was there and the entrepreneurs were available. There were a host of global solutions and a handful of local solutions, but after doing our market analysis on the gaps, we were able to pitch the solutions to a few ISPs who we have continued to improve the product with to where it is today.
What are some challenges that you have faced and how did you overcome them?
The first challenge one faces as a business founder is being everything on the business end.
The engineers develop and leave you to deal with the business aspects, from branding to pricing to sales and marketing, to support. However I’ve dealt with this challenge by being part of founder communities, participating in accelerators, and meeting other founders mainly for support, advice and exchange of ideas.
The best bits of advice that I’ve gotten are from Founders Fridays and the meet and greets.
They’ve helped me see my successes since as founder we get too immersed in the work and what isn’t working so much that we forget the small wins, and sometimes, these small wins are not small at all.
Sometimes things just don’t work and family and close friends play the critical role of being cheerleaders and support systems.
I overcome most challenges by learning to iterate fast. Fail fast and fail forward.
I think we should be having start-up showers as support systems 😁.
Financially/user acquisition wise how is the product doing?
The product is pretty new but has had some great milestones. We have connected over 4200+ end users, meaning they got connected to the internet through our system, The ISPs generate revenue of over Ksh. 3.5M monthly and we have over 40 businesses connected.
We just started our marketing campaigns and we expect this growth to increase.
What are some of the mistakes you made & some disadvantages of working on the product?
The biggest mistake was building a product because we believed there was a problem, without enough data from the market. We built features that we thought were the most important and needed. The market invalidated them and we ended up having to iterate and build for the market. So not listening to the market first cost us big.
We also experienced scaling issues while doing the initial development, we hadn’t considered how big the platform could become.
The biggest disadvantage is that our market is still hesitant on the uptake of SaaS (Software as a Service) products in comparison to off-shelf one-time own it all products. There is a culture of owning that is engraved in entrepreneurs and subscribing to utility tools is still a hustle. Finally another disadvantage is that there is a ceiling as to how many subscribers we can have, as this product is very niche.
What are some of your future plans?
We have had amazing partnerships that will see us being in sustainable wifi infrastructure and enabling last-mile connectivity in remote areas where neither electricity nor fiber has its reach. This is something we are working on currently and has some great potential.
If you had the chance to do things differently, what would you do?
😅 not sure, but maybe I would ask for help sooner where help is needed.
Any reommendations interms of who to follow, YouTube videos to watch, a useful webiste or books to read (learning resources)?
I follow Vusi thembekwayo, CTA, Engage Talks, Phil Director Becoming CEO
Where can people go to know more about you and your work?
Follow me in linkedin: LinkedIn or on Twitter @Mwaniki_Ngatia
You can also learn more about pnpRadius on our website
Getting personal, What does success look like to you as an individual and at what point would you say you have achieved said succcess?
When I have taken a business to LPO status and crossed revenues of $10M per month
Mwaniki and his friends at KnockKnock are also running a tech_for_good campaign to build a special bell for deaf children at the Kasarani Treeside school for the Deaf.
Check it out here and leave a coin or two 💸😁
Startup Spotlight – Flow
Check out this cool music player built by KenStarry. I’ve been using it myself for two weeks now and it’s quite solid. He keeps updating and building thus it gets better and cooler with every update.
Thank you for getting this far and hope to see you again next week.
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