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New Business Trends  Internet Business
Mbendi
MBendi Information Services (Pty) Ltd is a privately owned Internet business publishing, research and consulting company which runs Africa’s leading business and travel website at http://www.mbendi.com. The MBendi website is also one of the world’s leading mining, energy and international trade websites with global coverage of these topics. MBendi’s website and E-mail news and alert services support the activities of executive decision makers around the world. The site went live in October 1995 and is one of Africa’s oldest and best-known websites.
1. When did you start your Internet Business?
1995
2. How many times have you completely reworked your business model?
Our model was, from the start, based on providing high level African business information paid for by advertising. When we started out the banner concept had not been invented and we focused on using advertorial and advertising sentences to promote our advertisers.
While sticking to the basic model, we have, from time to time, experimented with other revenue sources including banners, paid subscriptions to E-mail newsletters and commissions.
3. What has been your financial growth in 2004/2005?
10%
4. What is the financial forecast for 2006/2007?
Turnover of between R 3 million and R 10 million
5. How many staff members do you have ?
We are 7.
6. What role does/did salary sacrifice play in your finances ?
Salary sacrifice paid a huge role, especially in the earlier years when the shareholders were paid next to nothing and we are still catching up.
5. How reliant are you on Wi-Fi e.g. hotspots or 3G? Please specify?
Not at all. Our website visitors tend, by and large, to be business people around the world accessing the Internet through their corporate network.
6. When do you project recovering all losses from day one?
2007
7. Do you see your market as local or international? Where does South Africa fit into your business model in the past / future?
Our website visitors (25%), newsletter recipients (28%) and advertising clients (45%) come from around the world. The % are the South Africans. More than 50% of our revenues come from outside South Africa.
8. Who financed your business – yourself / 3rd party, friends or institutions?
The sweat equity of the initial shareholders plus, at a later stage, equity finance provided by two business friends.
9. Describe some of your most despairing moments?
Our business has had far more highs than lows. Making sure there was always enough cash in the bank to pay the bills at the end of each month has always been a challenge and meant, at one stage, that we had to downsize.
Perhaps our greatest disappointment is the lack of imagination on the part of business decision makers and the advertising industry, specially in South Africa, about using the Internet. There still seems to be a perception that you can simply put up a billboard website in cyberspace and the world will rush to your door and that banners, particularly disruptive ones, are the best way to advertise.
10. What were your greatest confidence boosters e.g. consumer confidence?
Over the years we have had many confidence boosters including unsolicited articles in magazines and newspapers around the world, extensive links from major websites including those of the World Bank and the governments of the USA and UK and effusive feedback from visitors to our website or recipients of our newsletters. However, the biggest boosts to our confidence were seeing our advertisers and website users getting real business deals – often huge ones worth millions of dollars that Arthur Goldstuck would not have included in his research - from our Internet efforts on their behalf.
11. Were you a do-it-all-yourself entrepreneur? Is this still the case? Can you see this changing?
As a group we know our strengths and weaknesses and try to avoid getting involved in areas where we have no expertise.
12. Do you think funding for Internet Entrepreneurs has changed?
No – there’s precious little venture capital available in South Africa while the banks seem to go out of their way to make it next to impossible to get loan finance.
13. What advice do you have for new Internet Entrepreneurs?
Understand your business model and your competitors well. If it’s easy for you to enter a market, then it’s just as easy for a competitor to displace you.
14. Have changes in technology been a threat or opportunity?
By and large we have seen these as an opportunity.
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