Iridium Interactive partners with KPMG for its annual Kenya’s Top 100 mid-sized companies Survey (‘Top 100 Survey’) as the Digital Partners for the Second Consecutive year. This is an initiative of KPMG Kenya and Nation Media Group. The Survey seeks to identify Kenya’s fastest growing medium sized companies in order to showcase business excellence and highlight some of the country’s most successful entrepreneurship stories. The Survey is to celebrate the entrepreneurs who have contributed to wealth and job creation in the country. KPMG intends that new role models and national heroes will emerge from the Survey.

Essentially, a “Top 100 Mid-sized Company” (‘Top 100 Company’) is one which ranks ahead of its peers in terms of revenue growth, profit growth, returns to shareholders and cash generation/liquidity. A Winning Top 100 company is one which has succeeded in progressively growing its market position in the industries in which it operates and over time.

The Kenya Top100 Conference is on the 09th Oct 2014, followed by the Gala Dinner on the 10th Oct 2014 when the Top100 SME Companies will be honored.

As Kuza Biashara Founder & Chief Mentor, Mr Sriram Bharatam, shares in this interview with CNBC Africa’s Bonney Tunya, small business owners can effectively leverage on technology to Learn, Connect and Grow.

Some Quick Takeaways From This Video

• How young entrepreneurs can benefit from our recent partnership with AITEC-Africa
• Insights into Kuza Biashara training for small businesses
• Insights into Sri’s TED talk on “Why start-ups fail”
• Insights into the TIBU system done by Kuza Biashara’s sister companies to improve healthcare services to TB patients

This is definitely an interview worth watching…and as usual we’re counting on your to SHARE IT!

Aitec Africa has been focussed on ICT publishing, event management, professional development and training in Africa. AITEC has been a market-leader in terms of spreading knowledge on the Internet, computing and telecommunications across most of English-speaking Africa.

iridiumInteractive Limited is an Innovative Business Solutions company that helps some of the world’s leading brands solve their complex business problems. Iridium has success stories across various verticals ranging from Non-Profit, Education, Retail, Healthcare, Consulting, Manufacturing, Media, Entertainment and Government.  Iridium is uniquely positioned with varied experience and success stories and recognitions, both International and National.

African banks have a great challenge in overcoming their heritage of colonial banking, which was designed to cater primarily for government, corporate and high-worth individuals. The bottom part of the pyramid has been badly neglected. Now that the mobile operators are setting the pace in terms of providing low-cost banking services, banks are scrambling to catch up. This they can do not only through technological innovation, but also through a customer-oriented corporate culture and service innovation.

Entering its eighth year as the region’s leading banking forum, AITEC Banking & Mobile Money COMESA Conference 2014 is set to address the key issues faced by the region’s increasingly dynamic financial services sector. The 8th edition of AITEC Banking & Mobile Money COMESA Conference 2014,  slated to take place on the 10th & 11th of September, the event will draw over 350  Banking & Finance professionals from Banking / Mobile Banking industry from the COMESA region and a representation from the Industry & SME Sector .

The 2-day event will showcase

• 04 Indepth Workshops
  • Latest anti-money laundering threats and strategies
  • Achieving compliance with ISO27001
  • Securing data in on-premise and cloud infrastructure
  • Effective incident response and investigation

• Focused on 09 Topics
  • How can banks better support SMEs – and fire up the economy?
  • Innovation for inclusion,  Solutions for consumer services
  • Mapping low-income financial needs and services
  • Solutions for financial inclusion,  Security strategies & solutions
  • Core banking: Breaking the meld
  • Agent banking for financial inclusion
  • Regional payments integration

Which will be presented by

• 58 speakers
• delivering insightful keynotes, panel discussions and breakout sessions.

iridiumInteractive is the Digital Partner of AITEC Banking & Mobile Money COMESA Conference 2014.  Speaking on this occasion, Mr. Sean Moroney, AITEC Africa Chairman said “We are pleased to have signed up with iridiumInteractive as our Digital Media Partner for all our events.  It is through them that we will be reaching out to a wider audience plus provide interactive participation in the conference, both pre and post conference.”

This initiative is to identify Kenya’s fastest growing medium sized companies and showcase business excellence, highlight & celebrate the country’s most successful entrepreneurship stories, who have contributed to the wealth and jobs in the country. Beyond the Top 100 there is also another level, the Club 101. iridiumInteractive has been encouraging the members to push themselves to get into Club 101.

Partnering with KPMG Top 100 Survey for the second consecutive year, iridiumInteractive made a positive impact by contributing towards creating the digital assets, which is the online platform where prospective participants could learn about the survey and even fill in the survey and perform their financial calculations.

And as thought leaders, iridiumInteractive brought in the media buzz by leveraging the Social Media to promote an opportunity like this. This not only enhanced the reach to the prospects but also showed them how they can leverage this and go beyond. iridiumInteractive, when it first partnered with KPMG Top 100, brought in a spate of innovative ideas, which were very openly embraced by the Policy Team and the people behind KPMG.

As Sriram Bharatham, CEO and Founder, iridiumInteractive affirms “There is no other platform like KPMG Top 100 as of my knowledge right now in East Africa. And what really encouraged us and what we are seeing here is that as a team, collectively, all the partners are really driving at setting the bar higher. This is the 2nd consecutive year that we are part of it and we have already raised the bar. And we will continue doing this till there is a time we can see, there is a change coming in.”

Sriram Bharatham realized the need to have a community of entrepreneurs who could trust each other and serve as a sounding board for learning and growth. He wanted to create a group of likeminded entrepreneurs who would share common core values and work together towards nurturing and growing their career paths. As he says “ The chapter launch is one of the high points in my life”

Sriram Bharatam who pioneered EO East Africa Chapter in August 2013, as the Founding President of Entrepreneurs Organization East Africa received the Randi Caroll Award for the Best EO start up Chapter globally at Athens. The Global Leadership Conference was attended by 1,100 Entrepreneurial leaders from 46 countries. EO East Africa achieved a membership of over 45 in just one year.

Sriram Bharatham expresses his mission, his goal in establishing the EO Chapter “ We wish to create a positive learning environment and help local and regional entrepreneurs leverage the EO network. We are also pursuing opportunities in the form of local and regional learning events, which will serve as an opportunity to create once- in-a-lifetime experiences for our new and prospective members. As Chapter President, I want to set the right structure and culture, and nurture leaders who can sustain and grow our influence beyond East Africa. And as a task force member of EO’s Africa 750 initiative, I’m helping EO achieve 750 members by 2018 and roll out Africa as an independent region. As a chapter, we’re confident that we will play a major role in achieving these targets”