Mobile VAS company Netxcell Ltd has announced a joint venture for the African market with AquaSanTec, a group of companies that delivers water and sanitation solutions in seven African countries: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Sudan and Burundi. In India, Netxcell is a content aggregator, and provides messaging and video streaming solutions, USSD based call management, outbound dialers, SMS and MMS Centers etc.
From the telcos also in India, Essar owned Yu operates in Kenya, Vodafone has Vodacomm in Tanzania. Bharti Airtel’s acquisition talks for Zain Africa include Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, but not Sudan.
A holding company will be set up in Mauritius, called Netxcell Mauritius Ltd, which will have a liaison office on the seven countries, and outsource technology developments, service and support to Netxcell in Hyderabad. According to Financial Express, Netxcell will hold 51% in the joint venture, while AquaSanTec will own the rest. Initially, Netxcell will set up a base in Kenya to deploy a senior sales representative and a technical expert. NML will bill the operators in African market directly and in turn, Netxcell will bill NML for all its services/technology.
Markets
We culled out data on four of the countries that the JV will operate in, from Zain’s September 2009 investor presentation:
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