biNu in explosive growth

biNu the Sydney based startup founded in September 2008 by Gour Lentell and Dave Turner recorded a jaw dropping 112% increase in unique Monthly Active Users (MAUs) for Zimbabwe in nine months. This is based upon stats that biNu has released to Techzim. The startup is on a tear recording similarly impressive growth in other African countries.

Last year we reported that biNu had 60,000 unique users, 1.9 million sessions and 22 million page views in Zimbabwe alone. And this from an almost zero user base around April 2011. Today the figures stand at 127,000 unique viewers and 43 million page views.

The following table shows biNu’s growth across Africa:

Given that Zimbabwe has 9.8 million active mobile users and has between 700,000 to 2 million mobile Internet users there is a strong upside for biNu growth. The most impressive growth surely has to be Nigeria where biNu added 350,000 MAUs. In percentage terms growth was stronger in Mozambique (678%) and Uganda (533%) but in both those scenario’s it was of a very low base. Globally biNu has 4m Monthly Active Users and 700m page views per month and growing at 20% per month.

It is interesting to note that the top biNu app is Facebook/Facebook Messenger as shown.

Top Three biNu Apps by top Ten Countries – May 2012

Considering Facebook’s self acknowledged weakness in implementing a mobile strategy. As they noted in their prospectus their “ability to compete effectively depends upon many factors both within and beyond our control, including….our ability to monetize our products, including our ability to successfully monetize mobile usage”

Maybe Mark Zuckerberg should give Gour Lentell a call or better still hook up with him via biNu Messenger.