Kenyan consumer experience platform for businesses in Africa, Ajua today announced the acquisition of WayaWaya, a Kenya-based Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning messaging and payments company. The sum of the acquisition has been undisclosed.
Ajua Founder and CEO, Kenfield Griffith says, the acquisition of WayaWaya is an important milestone for Ajua, as they make a significant leap in ensuring the customer experience journey for businesses across Africa is seamless.
The acquisition of WayaWaya will allow Ajua to integrate Janja into their [Ajua] product stack, closing the customer experience loop —as the smart Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning built by WayaWaya gives SMEs the ability to automate responses and give the customer what they want, when they want it.
“Integrating WayaWaya’s technology significantly complements our product suite and gives us the ability to automate our clients’ businesses and grow their revenues, which is an extremely powerful proposition for our customers of all sizes, across Africa. From our experience in this area, we understand the CX fundamentals that drive growth for our customers and we want to bring this intelligence to SMEs across the continent,” Griffith explains.
Griffith further explains that, “The additional reach this acquisition brings allows Ajua to scale significantly within the SME vertical, as we provide our customers today, and in the future, the tools they need to grow in Africa and beyond.” Adding that, “We continue to be bullish on the point that customer experience and customer engagement are the engine for growth for businesses across the continent and they are disciplines that are critical factors in driving productivity and revenue growth.”
Adding to Griffith remarks, Teddy Ogallo, founder of WayaWaya and now the new VP of Product APIs and Integrations at Ajua said, “Ajua’s focus on introducing and scaling customer service and customer experience for the continent and essentially how they help businesses deliver excellence for their customers —is something my team and I have long admired. Seeing how WayaWaya’s technology can complement Ajua’s innovative products and services, and help scale and monetize businesses, is an exciting opportunity for us, and we are happy that our teams will be collaborating to build something unique for the continent”.
WayaWaya currently helps both individuals and businesses with intelligent messaging, across a number of social platforms, including Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram —to automate customer support and take cross-border payments. WayaWaya is also integrated with global and African financial leaders including Mpesa, Airtel Money, Bankserv, First Data, Interswitch, Stripe, Flutterwave, Visa and MasterCard, to enable borderless banking
The acquisition of WayaWaya comes just a month after Ajua announced its partnership with MTN Nigeria to launch a customer management product, MTN EnGauge, an agile application that offers innovative customer management solutions tailored solely for businesses using the MTN network. The roll-out is expected to generate more data for Ajua’s thousands of users much of which can now be better automated and monetized through the products and services WayaWaya has built, including cross-border digital transfers, payments services and intelligent finance bots.
Ajua launched in 2012 and was built to solve the customer experience gap for businesses in Africa and to drive business growth. Ajua combines technology with customer experience, and has built a number of innovative products that deliver real time customer feedback at the point of service, for small and large businesses across Africa, with the goal to digitalize and power growth for over 45 million SMEs. Current Ajua infrastructure partners and clients include GoodLife Pharmacy, Standard Chartered, FBNQuest, Safaricom, Total, Coca-Cola and Java House.
