After merging three ISPs into one entity last year, Dandemutande, which has effectively become one of the biggest ISPs locally, plans to keep all three brands separate. A Dandemutande representative told us recently that the company will keep the AfricaOnline, uMax, and iWayAfrica brands going separately.
The reason, according to the company is that, all the brands, individually, have their own customers who are loyal to the them.
A bit of background
In 2007 and 2008 Telkom SA acquired Africa Online and Mweb respectively. The expectation was that the two would be emerged under one new brand, but when Mweb was eventually rebranded to iWayAfrica Zimbabwe, AfricaOnline silently continued to exist. Silently because its visibility on the market went down to almost nothing. Looking from outside, it felt like no one wanted to make the decision to either kill the brand and migrate customers to the iWayAfrica brand.
With the merger of Dandemutande and iWayAfrica last year, our expectation once again was that the company would go with a single brand – presumably uMAX which visibly has some significant value locally. The company has instead chosen to go with 4 brands, all selling internet services:
- uMax – consumer internet powered by the WiMAX technology
- iWayAfrica – internet services for business and a bit of consumer market
- Africa Online – internet services for business market
- Utande – internet & cloud services for business market
The Inefficiencies
The adverse effects of not streamlining the branding are evident. Africa Online for example has no online visibility at all in terms of a website (or social media page, app etc…) where prospective customers can find information about its products. It’s not even on the iWayAfrica website and yet its logo quite visible on dandemutande offline marketing collateral. The Dandemutande representative we spoke to told us that despite being a silent brand, Africa Online has quite a loyal customer base which is why the group has not decided to kill off the brand.
The brands that are visible online – iWayAfrica, uMax and Utande – do so in silos though pushing what is essentially a similar product. The argument could ofcourse be that business internet can’t be sold or supported the same way as home internet, which does make sense but then the brands would be merged into just 2.
The way it is now the group has to pay 3 times (eventually 4 times when Africa Online comes online) for the same marketing services. And it’s not just online, even offline the company has to have marketing collateral to push all these brands separately, or risk confusing prospective customers when they present all 4 brands and have to explain how it’s all just the internet, but still different. It feels quite inefficient.
Other changes that have happened after last year’s merger include a leadership change:
- Michèle Scanlon, who had been CEO since 2013 was replaced by Michael Cocklin and then Nhena Nyagura in December 2015. According to information we received, Scanlon has gone up to Gondwana group level.
- Collin Franco, the company’s CTO, who had been there for some 19 years, retired. He was replaced by iWayAfrica’s Douglas Chitongo who has been with the group since Mweb days.
Dandemutande is now owned 51% by Masawara and other local investors, and the 49% by Gondwana.
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