Chinyere Okoye
25 June 2009
analysis
Lagos — There are many who believe that MultiChoice is at a saturation level in Nigeria by providing a top-end product to a discerning customer base in DStv. The truth is that MultiChoice is just at the beginning of a new cycle of growth, where entry level bouquets are attracting altogether new audience with different needs writes Chinyere Okoye
MultiChoice is indeed already experiencing a shift in consumer profiles. "We have more cash-based business and a higher demand in middle-class suburbs and townships and we need to shift our operations to maximise sales potential and customer service benefits," Olusegun Fayose, head of department, corporate communications for MultiChoice Nigeria limited, said.
"Broadcasting is a complicated business. You need to have the right people with the skills and competence to deliver 24/7. It's more about what we are doing right, than what the competitors are doing wrong." You need the right people to build a business. Concentrate on getting the job done well, customers and jobs will follow," he said.
"We will develop a new market and provide distribution infrastructure, packages and content which really suit our customers' unique needs." It is not convinced that offering cheaper bouquets and decoders will erode the more profitable high-end subscriptions. As long as we provide top quality content, technology and service, there will always be a ready market that is willing to pay," Fayose noted.
At MultiChoice Nigeria, "we have re-engineered the entire business around the environment, the customer profile and the cash-based economy. In Nigeria, the traditional systems were not working and to maximise the nuts and bolts we had to seriously rethink our way of doing business, which had to be packaged safely to allow payments to be made."
Fayose told THISDAY that MultiChoice has always had plans for Nigeria. "There had been massive investment in the Nigerian economy, especially in the area of production, film industry, where African Magic has been created for Nollywood films. MultiChoice has corporate social investment such as MultiChoice resource centre project and so far MultiChoice rolled out 121 resource centres across the geopolitical zones in the country.
What is resource centre all about? "Resource centre is the use of our expertise to aid learning and development in the public schools, where we donate educational channels, DStv dishes, accessories, decoders, teaching aid, chairs, and tables. MultiChoice also donates generators to these schools that are on the list of their beneficiaries. MultiChoice is also involved in partnership with SchoolNet Nigeria, a non-governmental organisation.
We also train teachers who train students to help them understand the life around them and improve the quality of education they get and this is possible because the resource centre project integrate the learning into the curriculum of the ministry of education for each school that MultiChoice is working with, he said.
Beyond all these, MultiChoice is partnering with the Sickle Cell Foundation of Nigeria to help communicate information and create awareness concerning the sickle cell scourge. It is considered one of the major diseases afflicting the black man especially, Nigerians. Statistics says about one out of five Nigerian is a sickle cell carrier and it is alarming, he said.
MultiChoice is also involved in the project of adopting a school which is part of Lagos State administration where MultiChoice donates money for the school renovation and makes the school a model, every now and then MultiChoice is involved in the empowerment of local entrepreneurs.
MultiChoice is also responsible for influencing Supersport drive and making them to invest massively in Nigeria, it is the only pay TV that carries Nigerian football and beams the matches live on DStv and it has been over 50 countries in the African continent.
Supersport has also sponsored basketball and they are involved in the training of production people. They have a major event here in Nigeria, nothing less than 90 per cent of technical tool made up of Nigerians and this was not the case in the past.
According to Fayose, "MultiChoice has infrastructural challenge, when you are running a company in Nigeria, you will pay for lot of things like power, the major challenge of pay TV is piracy and is capable of killing an industry." Again, it is stealing intellectual property and it is sad because where we go out of our way to bring in technology that will make it possible for viewers to enjoy our content and some people are out there working hard negatively to tap signals.
There are different levels of piracy-we have those outside the country, who buy dishes and satellites to get content that are not for Nigerian market and there are regulatory issues that you have to take care of before you can operate in any country.
"Furthermore, there are cases where people subscribe to us for private use but the person uses it for public use, it is illegal though we are working with the copyright commission to curb piracy. MultiChoice wants their subscribers to get value for their money and this is why they constantly add channels to the DStv bouquet. In spite of the global meltdown, we have not increased the price of the subscription.
"The company is growing and has invested money in the technology to make it make it easier for our subscriber to get quality signals and we have also spent money to expand our operations by hiring one manager or the other to operate at the regional level.
"We have invested money in buying property like offices in different regional level, we have increased the number of offices we have in Lagos. We have also helped the Nigerian economy in terms of wars against piracy, we have introduced smartcard marriage, which is more like pairing the decoder and smartcard in such a way that the decoder and the card works together but will not work in another decoder, before it is so easy that somebody can steal another person card and put it in his /her decoder, this time it will not work," Fayose said.
"We are soon going to introduce another technology to the market, all these is just to make our customers enjoy DStv. Again we are going to invest money in the local economy; all we want to do is to make sure customers get value for their money.
However, "MultiChoice empowers the youths, when we partner with local players by empowering them to become DStv super dealer, we give them bank guarantee, branding support, we give them communication support and train them to understand our integrated business system which we use on management level.
"Now that we have about 20 major super dealers, these major super dealers and lots of other dealers that operate with them are youths and they are Nigerian citizens and it gives them employment," he stressed.
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Why won't multichoice re-engineer their business as they see Nigeria as a money making haven. The government should please chase them and their bad business out of Nigeria. You want to ask why? In their home country South africa they never allow any competition by colluding with the broadcasting licensing organisation in RSA. to stop all potential competitors from anchoring in that country. That explain why companies like HiTv, Daar Communications are unable to barth in that country successfully. They are very expensive, exploiting customers because of the monopoly they are enjoying. They are eating from the sweat of our… [Read Full Text]