Patrick Muteti is a Kenyan entrepreneur who has a BBIT degree from Strathmore University and a certificate in entrepreneurship from MIT. He was an IT consultant and built WAP systems, corporate software, robotics, before founding Wavuh (wavuh.com) in 2012.
We had a chat about his entrepreneurship journey with Wavuh and here is what he had to say.
What is Wavuh and how did it come about?
I’ve been in business for close to 8 years. When I started off in business I was a simple developer building all matters of things ranging from simple applications to complex robotic solutions. The software solutions included office and financial analysis tools among others. I was mostly working with SMEs and I realized that there was a huge gap in the SME space. No one seemed to be giving them the kind of scalable solutions that would take care of their wholesome operations. After 2010 ERPs (Enterprise Resource Planning) properly hit the market. ERP’s are basically software solutions that takes care of the whole organization and is fully integrated such that an action in payroll has a direct impact on say finance. They work better instead of having different software solutions taking care of the different company functions like sales, HR, payroll, finance, projects and point of sale. I had the chance to interact with the known ERPs like SAP, Oracle Financials, Microsoft Dynamics. They were working very well for some companies but they were not very relevant for the majority of the smaller businesses. They were solving merely half of the SME business problems.
I then decided to come up with an ERP of my own that would be relevant to Kenyan and African businesses. Building the platform and fitting together all the components took a whole year. The ERP featured software components that I had built for different clients. I called the ERP Wavuh, which comes from the Swahili word wavu (meaning net).
What are the features of Wavuh?
The constitution of Wavuh was informed by 5 main organizational pillars: customers, employees, finance, supply chain & operations. To power these pillars the ERP has 9 base modules.
- CRM
- Human Resource
- Payroll
- Stock Control
- Asset management
- Project Management
- Finance
- Manufacturing
- Procurement
The ERP has also evolved to include specialized components for clients with specialized needs. For instance we have custom applications for different sectors like schools (school management system) and law firms (case management system). We are in the process of building more. It is also integrated with SMS and email.
Wavuh – Desktop
Access and connectivity?
Wavuh runs off the cloud and it is hosted in Kenya. It can be accessed using any Internet enabled device with a browser. The ERP system is light and can work with even patchy Internet.
Do you have an offline version?
We are currently working on an offline version of the ERP. It will be run off the browser and you can continue working when you are offline. When connectivity comes back it then synchronized the information you had saved to the cloud.
Wavuh – Mobile
What data safeguards exist for customers using Wavuh especially?
Our system is fully encrypted so that anyone who has unauthorized access to the data cannot be able make any sense out of it.
It is important to note that Wavuh company operations run on Wavuh ERP so whatever efforts we put in to make sure no one can access our data is the exact kind of effort we put in to ensure all our customer’s data is safe and secure. We guarantee 99.9% uptime in any given month.
After the Angani servers went down we experienced downtime of about a day and a half. We have since created replica sites in data centers in the United States and Germany. For Kenya, we have now partnered with the new cloud outfit, Node Africa. That means that whatever happens in any data center, we will always be up.
We didn’t lose any data after the Angani downtime because we do several backups of data our servers every hour.
Costs?
We have different packages that cost from Ksh. 2,900 to Ksh. 17,900 per month with a one off set up fee. The basic package (Ksh. 2,900) comes with a CRM, Stock control and basic finance modules and can accommodate upto 10 users (go here wavuh.com/pricing for full pricing options).
What was the turning point for the business?
That was in 2015 when we put the product on the cloud. The adaptation to the cloud wasn’t smooth in the beginning and we had to go back to the drawing board and redesign the system to fit the cloud better. After the redesign, our business picked up and we signed up quite a few clients.
Our client base now includes: Modern Coast, Shani School, Longonot Gate Development Ltd, EHG Housing, Strathmore Business School, The British High Commission, Lorenzo drycleaners, Pamhair Salon (Capital Center) and Carego International (American company).
Have you had any overseas sales?
In 2013, I was introduced to Steve Landman, a businessman from Silicon Valley with a bias towards health management. He was doing health related projects and was looking for a solution that would compliment a health care management system. A friend of mine ran into him, referred him to me and when we met I pitched Wavuh. He looked at the product, he loved it and the next day I had a contract. The guy was running the health project in Egypt, Singapore, United Arab Emirates. Vietnam and Pakistan. Through our partnership we were able to deploy Wavuh in all these countries plus in his office in San Fransisco. He has also recently closed another deal with the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and we will be the software partner and deploy Wavuh.
What’s the Wavuh funding story?
Wavuh started out from savings I had accumulated from a previous business. Over time, we have been able to sustain ourselves from revenues from the business. There has been several occasions however that I have had to talk to family and friends to help out.
We don’t have an investor yet but we are open to investment from people who have a shared vision. We have had offers in the past but the vision of the potential investors did not really coincide with ours and so we had to turn them down.
A lack of investment has slowed our growth but it has also helped us be clear on the kind of direction we want to take as a company.
Which Wavuh failures can you share?
One of the biggest mistakes we did was to have an inferiority complex and to not be sure of ourselves and our product. We brought in another entity to run client service and billing. We really burned our fingers because the entity was basically trying to grow their business and to further their interests and they were just using us. So one of the lessons we learned is that is that it’s important as an entrepreneur to believe in yourself and your product. You have to be willing to take the risk with the customer. Don’t let someone else take the risk for you because chances are that they are protecting their own interests and looking out for themselves. Believe in yourself and be willing to make mistakes with the customer. Mistakes with one customer just mean that you will learn from them, improve and will offer a better product and experience to the next customer.
Which key lesson can you share with upcoming entrepreneurs?
That would be on pricing. We took a long time to figure out pricing. We actually realized that we had grossly under-priced our product and we had to review that. Pricing your product lowly doesn’t necessarily mean that it will sell. What most of the customers want is a value addition and if the value that you are proposing to them corresponds to the pricing that you have for your product then they will be happy to pay for it. The kind of pricing you have for your product is very important when you are designing your go-to market strategy.
Advice for entrepreneurs who want to set up a business in Kenya?
To make it in Kenya you have be very sure of yourself. Kenya is a very tough market where you have people who are always looking for ideas to steal and others who are possibly doing what you are doing. You then have to be very confident and find a way of standing out. You also need to be patient and take time to build your business. You need to give your product time to mature and give it appropriate testing. Lastly, you need be hungry, aggressive and most importantly don’t give up because one client can be your gateway to greatness.
How has the improved Internet penetration in Kenya impacted your business?
3 years ago when I approached some people with the idea of possibly putting them up on the cloud they told me that I had come 10 years too early. That the cloud couldn’t possibly work in the country because of the kind of connectivity we had. Fast forward to now, I have approached people who shared the same views them and I have even signed up a couple of them. We have experienced a tremendous growth in terms of the digital space. More than 50% of Kenyans now use the Internet on a regular basis and hopefully sometime soon it will reach 80%. What that definitely means is more business for us and our clients will be able to enjoy a more global reach both for their products and raw materials. The more connectivity we get, the more we’ll go online, the more growth that we will experience in the digital economy.
Is the government doing enough to help software developers export their products?
We have a good number of small businesses in the tech industry doing amazing stuff but they don’t get the kind of exposure that is required. The government can do more to help such businesses so that they can be export ready.
I am happy to report that we now have a lobbying organization of IT companies and it is called KITOS (Kenyan IT and Outsourcing Society). What KITOS is meant to do is to bring together people in the industry and help them to be able to export.
There is an initiative called the Netherlands Trust Fund that was funded by the Dutch Government and implemented by the ICT Authority to help companies be export ready. Wavuh was among the 33 shortlisted companies and it has really helped us in terms of exposure. The government needs to have these kind of partnerships going because they are really helpful. It also needs to reach out to as many companies as they can so they can be able to know them and build a directory of Kenyan businesses in different sectors. They can then use the directory to collectively market the businesses overseas.