Before X and Facebook took over our phones, there were people already pushing content & making bank
Who is Mr. Samuel Majani?
Mr. Samuel Majani is the Founder of Ghafla, Kadipro and OddsCracker.
Mr. Majani started his tech entrepreneurship journey back in 2009 while he was still 19 years old, to date, he’s been going at it for 14 years now.
He grew up in Spring Valley, Nairobi in his younger years, went to Strathmore school after which he joined JKUAT (Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology) to pursue a degree in Electronics and Computer Engineering.
He dropped out after about a year and a half and has been going at entrepreneurship ever since.
What led to Ghafla being born?
Back in 2008/9 there was little to no local Kenyan content online, the internet, blogs, websites etc as we know them today were still in their nascent stages of development. Smart phones were not a thing yet and if you couldn’t afford a blackberry, Nokia was still the go to brand connecting people and Kenyans alike.
Newspapers and the news on TV were still the main channels of finding out what happened on the other side of town or what our favorite celebrities had been up to the previous weekend.
Media houses had already figured out that they could share content online, but they were doing very little of this as they were not willing to invest too much into unfamiliar territory.
If you wanted to find lyrics to your favorite song, you had to wait for a section in one of the weekend newspapers where they printed out the lyrics to a trending hit, a few collectors back in our younger years had scrap books filled with these lyrics.
Majani was a Bamboo fan and wanted lyrics to his hit song “Usilete Compe” but of course if he had missed the weekend edition then he would have to go on vibing to the chorus while infusing his own lines into the song as we all do from time to time.
Upon searching for Bamboo lyrics online, Google only gave back results on bamboo forests, even general searches like Kenyan music or Kenyan news gave back little to no results. This right here was how Ghafla was birthed.
How it all started.
It all started as Kenyalyrics.com, a website where one could find lyrics for local Kenyan songs.
The website grew to become one of Kenya’s top ranking websites at the time, hitting up to 50k visits a month which was no small feat considering back in the day we had to visit a cyber café for optimal internet time.
In 2011 there was a pitch competition at the Ihub which Majani won and managed to get three million shillings invested into Kenya lyrics for 25% of the company to help it grow further.
Going from Lyrics to general entertainment and news.
After raising funding, Mr. Majani and the investors had a bit of a rough back and forth as each side wanted to take a different path towards growing the company further.
On one end Majani wanted to build the lyrics website into something sort of a Wikipedia but for music, with artist bios, histories etc. While the investors on the other hand wanted them to put out as much news content as they could find, anything flies, not just content on music.
Eventually Majani decided to try their way and it turned out to be good for them after all.
Jackpot!
When they covered the song “You Guy” by P-Unit, a Kenyan boy band that used to put out hit after hit back in the day, something sparked and the number of visitors to their website and engagement started to grow exponentially.
On looking deeper they realized that the engagement was mainly due to the thumbnail that they had used (of Vera Sidika 🧐), and this was the beginning of their new strategy towards growing even further by using the science of thumbnails or as most us of call it, click bait, hehe.
At this point both the founders and investors were aligned and they went all in on pushing and growing Ghafla.
Growth stage.
At some point Ghafla was at par with the likes of Facebook and Twitter in terms of numbers and engagement in Kenya, talk of being a giant.
Their growth even made the big media companies such as The Nation and Standard notice what was going on in the online space and begin to invest into making and growing their own products for online users and consumption.
During this period of awesome growth, Ghafla got a few acquisition offers from various entities: Radio Africa offered to buy them off for 5 Million Ksh (for a 90% stake), Genesis Media the company that owns Tuko News in Kenya also put in an offer.
The company that come very close to a successful acquisition was Ringier Kenya a subsidy of Ringier Africa Digital Publishing which has roots in other African countries as well. After a 3 months’ partnership between Ghafla and Ringier they decided to part ways mainly as a result of integration being a little hard, startups work one way and corporates do things another way.
Ghafla today.
After the failed partnership/acquisition, Ghafla reset and went back to their growth ways even opening up shop in a few other African countries ushering in the multinational era of Ghafla.
They have tried a few other channels as well from being on YouTube to Instagram to social commerce to classifieds, timing has not been on their side on some of these fronts but they are still looking to keep innovating and growing more.
Thank you to Wangari Stewart for the awesome video that inspired this feature. If you would like to learn more about Mr. Majani plus other tech stories in the Kenyan scene check out her channel Nine to 5 with Wangari 🚀.
Ideas: Therapy app/platform for health workers.
Doctors, nurses, paramedics and health workers in general see a lot and deal with a lot that would make anyone easily depressed and anxious yet it is very hard to find a platform dedicated specifically to the mental health of these healthcare based professionals.
A simple google search will give you the staggering statistics of the challenges and harm that health workers undergo and have to put up with on a daily basis. Not all of them have family and friends to talk to at the end of a hard day thus a simple private and somewhat social app would be a great way for them to let go of the many thoughts backed up in their minds.
Idea to think about.
Worth a read:
💸 Bitcoin is once again alive and kicking
✈ Airbus to launch drone hub for high-altitude satellites in Kenya
💰 Fuse announces $10 million grant programme for Web3 startups
😰 Court drama over Twiga Foods’ lingering cloud service debt
Tool tip.
To improve marketing, respect your customers time, especially with customer service. Answer calls, respond to dms, questions on comments in a timely manner and with some courtesy. Proper customer care = Good word of mouth marketing.
Thank you for reading this far. Do tell a friend.
