I am going to attempt to address your concerns about the business model through an example of what I have encountered living in South Africa. I don't know if it will help but I am going to try. It may even be horrible comparison but it makes sense in my head.
Background
I am a software developer by trade. I worked in a rather large call center with a mixture of clients from banking-to-furniture retailers-to-fast money lenders -to- clothing retailers. They call center would run campaigns for sales, debt collection and surveys. The reason these companies would come to us was because ,in addition to their own contacts list, we had the best understanding of the lower demographics and how to connect with them. In South Africa we call them the lower LSMs (Living Standard Measure).
Make up of the Demographics
The lower LSM target were made up of Domestic Workers such as Cleaners, Gardeners, Street Sweepers, Security Guards ect, car guards, farm workers. The people who work in low paying jobs. Then there are the Immigrants from other African countries.
Now here is the interesting part. When making sales to these lower LSM clients over 70% of the time the delivery address for the product they were buying was not for the same address that they lived in as opposed to the higher LSM clients who's delivery address was not their own residential address abut 12% of the time. What this told us was that the bread winner was living in the city center while the family was living in the rural areas. In other words the Rural members of the family were the consumers and Urban member of the family was the Purchaser. Now this sort of purchasing behavior can seriously skew the statistics on purchasing power in urban areas.
An example.
- The Sale So a basic example of one of the major furniture retailers in Southern Africa. Client Mr Xulu buys a basic sofa couch from the retailer for R3000 (+-$300). He only earns R3000 p/m. So he will buy the couch on Higher Purchase (20% interest) over the next 12 months. Mr Xulu will also probably purchase some pre-paid airtime which is sold at most retailers at the till. Now Mr Xulu can send the sofa and some airtime back to the "farm" (a dusty patch somewhere in the Drakensburg)
- The Survey. 2 Weeks later Mr Xulu will be hounded to complete a survey on his sale via. Thus waiting his pre-purchased airtime
- Debt Collection 9 months in Mr Xulu has decided to visit the "farm". In that time he has missed his payment and because he is in a rural area the accounts department cannot get hold of him. He does not want to be penalized, and in truth the retailer does not want to spend money to collect money. If only their was a way to still contact Mr Xulu.
What I am trying to illustrate is the consumer behavior that I have encountered living in a third world country, as well as a typical way that a business can interact/communicate with their client. It is a basic example. The same applies for the vast amount of immigrants (Zimbabweans and Conganease) that come to South Africa to work and send money and products back to their rural homelands.
How I feel SAS take advantage and possible help reshape that consumer behavior
1) Through the use of a Satellite Phone and tools like BeepTool (not exclusively Beeptool), the phones and data will be
bought by the Urban family and friends for the Rural members. Communication between the urban and rural family members will be done via the Chat app. It will be cheaper/the only way to communicate with each other.
2) Businesses trying to connect with consumer (not the purchaser) can communicate through the likes of a BeepTool or chatellite advertising portal.
3) Businesses can connect to the purchaser especially if they are travelling in and out of urban areas or in when travelling in between countries even.
These do not include applications such IOT/ M2M and other business to business applications.
So in my opinion the market is there in the third world. It is just a lot harder to gauge with out understanding the difference between the purchaser, the consumer, and how they interact in the the real third world. As I stated already, many of our business clients were banks, lenders and major retailers. They catered for the lower end of the market, they are companies valued in the billions of dollars and they are companies that can benefit from advertising and marketing to the consumer while processing payments, and keeping in touch with what is in essence an roaming purchaser.
