hello it's k m glin from gambling Insider and today I'm joined by Tim schoffman from wa technology and Imran barari from any group first of all guys I just want to ask about the uh the structure of the joint venture and what benefits it's going to bring for both companies yeah thanks uh thanks a lot for asking I think this is very important partnership for us uh we looked at it for a while that how we are going to scale up ourself in the market uh with wchn techology growing very fast rapidly in recent times and we focused on our Africa we thought this is the best of both world that we both come together and do this scale up opportunity that Africa offers so we see humongous potential put together the skill set that we complement each other yeah thank you yes so what Technology Group has been really focused on what I might called Frontier markets and we've been specifically looking at laan with an emphasis on Brazil we've been developing that region really well and we wanted to now look at how we could strategically expand into other big opportunity markets and regions Africa was an obvious one for us but finding the right partner and the right platform to go into that market was the first major step obviously you can't have similar platforms and similar markets not always because consumer habits are different payouts are different how us interact with platforms is different so on facing some assessment and meeting with imram and his team and his company perfect it's a perfect opportunity for us to see how we could put those businesses together and attack that market together we have local expertise in the market we work with other providers here but we needed a solid platform that could cater for the diversity and the fragmented nature of what of what Africa was so that was the reason why and that's why it's such a perfect Synergy for us to bring the business together at this time 2024 is a big year for us in in Africa so um this is a perfect time for us to do this do this part I mean how much growth potential do you think there is in the African Market cuz there's been a lot of things in the last couple of months even last couple of weeks a lot of big Partnerships different companies so how big do you think potential is there so I think it's a right now if you look at Global you know markets which are doing very well I think you are seeing Africa is a huge growth potential Market it's been going on for a while but you're seeing the speed of growth is very different now the mobile penetration and the better data speed has made a huge difference difference if you look at 2 years ago or 3 years ago Africa still had a lot of challenges around how the data speed and the educational piece was there the smartphones were not that common you are seeing a lot more overall Improvement in consumer Behavior how better uh understanding they have on using uh various products you're also seeing the market mature in number of African countries initially there were only few countries that you see which were growing if you look at Nigeria IND was a very big market growth early early stage Kenya was a big market growth but you're seeing a lot of other countries now catching up where they are also having much more better regulatory require you know environment and you see that's the main reason why a lot of companies who are not able to get into the African Market previously they are able to do it now if you're looking growth potential in Latin America and if you look at in Africa outside us if there is something which is growing at a rapid speed these are the two markets and I think that's where you're going to see a lot more potential growth going forward especially with the new markets opening up yeah we when we started we looking only a couple of markets right now we offer almost 12 countries where we have operations with the operators and with the partnership we are going number of more countries that you're going to see in next one year as of now our Outlook looks amazing essentially all I can say is that yeah yeah Tim you want to add to that yeah look um everything that that Imam said I think you know the development of technology and access to users in Africa obviously over the recent years has just open up the market so for me again going back to the platform and the partnership that's why this is so important for us it gives us the ability to be diverse in the different approaches that we take on those individual markets to make sure we can reach those consumers opportunities massive I mean you mentioned a few countries there but which particular markets does this joint venture involv in Africa yeah so we are right now heavily focused on Nigeria uh on the uh western side Nigeria Ghana uh mainly the big markets over there on the Eastern side we are in Kenya Tanzania Uganda Zambia mozic we are now targeting DRC Malawi right uh and we are going further in terms of Ethiopia is one of the key Market coming up very well we're also looking very aggressively now towards South Africa which is much more regulated market but we see huge potential in in the partnership that we have now that we will be targeting that market as well I think you're going to see us essentially targeting around 20 markets in this year almost 20 countries where you'll see us going and having operations Angola is another Market coming up very well so we are expanding very rapidly and I think next 6 to 8 months we will be launching multiple markets new markets yeah I mean this isn't the first time any group has entered Africa has it you've also done other Ventures as well I believe yeah no no absolutely um so we have been in in the market for a long time almost 4 years we started as a lightweight front end specialist in the market and we grew from there to a full scale platform over the period of time we have worked with number of bigger Brands and I think our expertise or experience in the market has got us to the level where we got very focused solution which is catering for all these countries and the challenges they face in terms of how to you reach out to the customer for us it's a very going back to the very core principle that we work that you have to genuinely help customer if you genuinely try to help customer people appreciate you cannot fake it you have to go through the grunt which we did over the years and we now got to a level where we are looking for okay how we're going to scale up from here on and I think that's what this part is going to bring in where we're going to scale up to the next level in the next coming year yeah okay thank you very much thank you Tim thank you both for joining us cheers thank you