Growing Big While Still Small: A Case Study on Kazang Prepaid

Sales and distribution is a difficult business because the small revenue margins mean successful companies need large operations to make a meaningful profit. Small companies that want to compete in this space must find clever ways to grow quickly with minimal staff and limited budgets. Being in this position is especially hard in an industry like digital finance, where third-party providers compete with large corporates (e.g., mobile network operators).

Focusing on a third-party provider in Zambia, Kazang Prepaid, this case study is part of the Global Learning Agenda series of the UNCDF MM4P program in digital finance. It explores Kazang’s approach to dealing with the classic challenges impeding the expansion of profitable and sustainable agent networks in Zambia.

Kazang has been scaling up aggressively, but the company wants to grow smarter by better understanding how to select and support successful agents as well as to offer more products. UNCDF MM4P partnered with the consulting firm HORUS Telecom & Utilities to help Kazang develop a strategy, one that includes a mobile-based application to collect information and better manage the recruitment and monitoring of its agent network.