00:00You talk about being a traditional telecom company, but it really seems like the other parts of your business are increasingly leading to growth.
00:08Can you talk about how much some of the other parts of the business have factored in to these results?
00:16Good morning, Jennifer. Thanks for having me.
00:18September was a remarkable month for us because it is the first month number of our digital service users surpassed our telecom sim users.
00:28At 145 million in the markets that we operate today, which is actually from Pakistan to Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Ukraine,
00:38we serve a population of half a billion. And one out of every three people is our telecom customers.
00:46And now one out of every three people is also our digital service customers.
00:50And that digital services is what's driving our business up and up.
00:54It was almost 18 percent of our top line. And last quarter, it grew 63 percent.
01:01And actually, the margins are also improved by 320 basis points because, you know, the extra growth that we see in digital services is coming with margins higher than we were expecting.
01:13So I'm very, very happy to see that the concept of a digital operator is becoming very tangible.
01:19And I think in frontier markets and possibly also you will see the same things happening in Africa.
01:25It is actually the telecom operator needs to take responsibility to bring meaningful digital services and augmented intelligence to the hands and fingerprints of the consumers.
01:38Is your expectation then we'll continue to see some of these digital services potentially cannibalizing the core business?
01:45How do you balance that moving forward?
01:50No, actually, not at all.
01:52What we see is our digital services in the areas like financial services, entertainment, health care, education, retailing and enterprise services.
02:02The moment a customer of our telecom business starts consuming these services, their engagement increases, their ARPU goes up and their retention actually improves.
02:13So, right on the contrary, rather than cannibalizing, it's a great complementary value that we see in the marketplace.
02:22The more we are relevant to the customers, the more number of minutes we serve them, the bigger the potential, the bigger the wallet share and the bigger the growth opportunity.
02:32Do you expect then to expand to more markets at this point?
02:37Is that something you're eyeing?
02:40Well, currently we are operating in five countries, which we are very proud to serve.
02:45I am prioritizing our growth in these countries as my number one priority.
02:50But as we look further, we are very excited to look into large population countries where the demographic dividend is still live.
02:59People are getting richer and richer and basically that we can serve the underserved.
03:06And I think, you know, that's a very sweet spot that we see in our business model.
03:10And if there are opportunities like that, which is at reasonable prices, of course, we would show interest.
03:17Does that potentially mean Africa is on the horizon?
03:22I think Africa is a beautiful market with, you know, definitely growing populations.
03:27And most importantly, populations being significantly underserved when it comes to financial services, entertainment, health care, education and all businesses around from classifieds to right hailing the areas that we have been investing in our own markets.
03:44Khan, can you talk about some of the dispersions really that we're seeing in the markets that you operate in?
03:51And if we take a look at some of them, there's quite a bit of volatility, especially if you consider what we've seen in 2025.
03:56How do you operate in such different markets considering some of the FX risks that might come with it?
04:05Look, I think operating in frontier and emerging markets requires a lot of discipline.
04:11And that discipline is about really looking to the markets and having a policy of adapting disciplined fair value pricing.
04:19The moment you take your eyes off the ball in terms of the GDP growth and consumer spending and you do not actually make the actions that is necessary to have your pricing adapt to the new realities of inflation and devaluation, you will lose the game.
04:35We apply very disciplined fair value pricing in our markets as well as we leverage our local operations from local markets.
04:43And I think those two things are the best recipes for managing your risks in frontier and emerging markets.
04:50And we do have a track record of applying that discipline continuously.
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