Sliide's Free Data App Set to Roll Out in South Africa With Expansion Plans for Kenya With Safaricom and Ghana With MTN

London — Sliide's uses content to acquire a mobile audience that it sells to advertisers. It then passes back some of the advertising revenues as free data and airtime for users. Russell Southwood spoke to its Sliide's founder and CEO Corbyn Munnik about the forthcoming launch in South Africa and its wider expansion plans.

The Sliide app appears on the lock screen of the phone and offers users relevant content:" We're still aggregating news from all the biggest local and largest international providers (in Nigeria) to cover things like the Premiership".

Since I last spoke to Sliide in April 2016, it has expanded its number of subscribers:"Nigeria is going very well. We have 150,000 subscribers. There's been some trouble managing Etisalat in their distribution efforts. The interesting thing is that it's an issue a lot of mobile operators face. It has the know-how to get stuff installed and get uptake".

"But we're marketing over 3 months because we know it works. They have to execute on that campaign. The right SMS with the right tracking links have to be sent out at the time we agreed. Their execution just isn't there at all. The first burst that went out of the end of November last year was really fragmented. It's not the most digitally savvy among mobile operators. One of the lessons is that we should really work from their office for the first month when we go live".

So have there been any improvements to the free data and airtime offer in Nigeria?:"The offer is still the same but we've added more ways to earn data and airtime in the app including downloading apps, watching video content (from an ad network) and surveys".

In order to get it right from a regulatory perspective in South Africa, it's launching through partners who have signed with Vodacom:"It launched an RFP for this kind of approach so there will be a lot more commitment from the distribution perspective".

Vodacom has branded the Sliide app Red and it sits in the Google Play Store and the Vodacom app store. The push will be to the 15 million Android phone users in South Africa. Phase one will be similar to Nigeria where the app will be marketed to existing phone users and phase 2 will see Vodacom pre-install the app on lower end devices. The South African launch will take place very shortly.

So what are the subscriber number expectations?"Vodacom have said in the contract that if they don't get 100,000 subscribers in the first four months, it will pay us for the shortfall. Undoubtedly we'll pick up more from there on in". In Nigeria, Sliide took from April last year to now to get to 150,000 subscribers but a lot of that time was used to fine-tune the marketing needed.

So will there be South Africa specific content?:"All of the content is South Africa-focused. There is a lot of South African content and some internationals in there. Some of the interests are different like Rugby rather than football. All of our offers will be country-specific".

The next stage after the Vodacom launch in South Africa will be a launch with Safaricom in Kenya, followed by MTN in Nigeria and then followed by MTN in Ghana.

"We also have on-going discussions with operators in Pakistan. In the USA there's a service called the Lifeline programme". According to the FCC:"Since 1985, the Lifeline program has provided a discount on phone service for qualifying low-income consumers to ensure that all Americans have the opportunities and security that phone service brings, including being able to connect to jobs, family and emergency services".

Sliide has been testing its service with two operators as part of this programme, providing things like Amazon, Walmart, Paypal and Google Play credits. As part of this inclusion programme they get 1GB of data. ARPU is much higher for Sliide: "Doing it in Nigeria, we get US60 cents, in South Africa we get US$1 but in the USA we get US$3-5 per month per subscriber".

Watch Corbyn Munnik, Sliide talking about how the business works:"

Read Full Story