I’m very proud of the business that we’ve created here at Mocality, but I’m especially proud of two things:

1. Our crowdsourcing program. When we started this business, we knew that (unlike in the UK or US, where you can just kickstart your directory business with a DVD of business data bought from a commercial supplier), if we wanted a comprehensive database of Kenyan business, we would have to build it ourselves. We knew also that if we wanted to build the business quickly, we’d have to engage a lot of Kenyans to help us. So we built our crowd program that utilises M-PESA (Kenya’s ubiquitous Mobile Money system) to reward any Kenyan with a mobile phone who contributes entries to our database, once those entries have been validated by our team. Over two years, we’ve paid out Ksh. 11m (over $100,000) to thousands of individuals, and we have built Kenya’s most comprehensive directory, with over 170,000 verified listings. Personally, I regard the program as one of THE highlights of my 18 year career on the internet.
2. From day 1, we aimed to target all Kenyan businesses, irrespective of size. As a result, for about 2/3rds of our listed businesses, Mocality is their first step onto the web. That’s about 100,000 businesses that Mocality has brought online.

Please bear these two facts in mind as you read what follows.

Our database IS our business, and we protect and tend it very carefully. We spot and block automated attacks, amongst other measures. We regularly contact our business owners, to help them keep their records up-to-date, and they are welcome to contact our call centre team for help whenever they need it.

In September, Google launched Getting Kenyan Businesses Online (GKBO). Whilst we saw aspects of their program that were competitive, we welcomed the initiative, as Kenya still has enough growth in it that every new entrant helps the overall market. We are also confident enough in our product, our local team, and our deep local commitment that we believe we can hold our own against any competition, playing fair.

Shortly after that launch, we started receiving some odd calls. One or two business owners were clearly getting confused because they wanted help with their website, and we don’t currently offer websites, only a listing. Initially, we didn’t think much of it, but the confusing calls continued through November.

The Forensic analysis

What follows is necessarily a little technical. I’ve tried to make it as clear as I can, but two definitions may help the lay reader:

• IP Address – the numerical id by which computers identify themselves online.
• User-Agent - When a browser requests a page from a webserver, it tells the server what make, model, and version of browser it is, so that the webserver can serve content tailored to that browser’s capabilities. Webservers keep a log of both these details for every page requested, allowing us to do interesting detective work.

If you’re not interested in the technical details, you can always jump straight to the Conclusion.

At the start of December we analysed our server logs to look for a common pattern for the businesses that had contacted us with these confused calls. We found a single IP/ User-Agent combination that had accessed all these businesses:

IP Address: 41.203.221.138

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686) AppleWebKit/535.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/14.0.835.186 Safari/535.1

The user agent is unusual for Kenya: the stable version of Google Chrome released on 20 September 2011, running on 32-bit Linux. With the exception of this IP, it barely appears in our logs.

We looked up the ownership record for 41.203.221.138 via WHOIS.

% Information related to '41.203.220.0 - 41.203.221.255'

inetnum:        41.203.220.0 - 41.203.221.255
netname:        Fixed_Wimax-Fiber-Rollout-Central-Kenya
descr:          Fixed Wimax and Fiber  Roll out for Central Kenya Region
country:        KE
admin-c:        OC406-AFRINIC
tech-c:         OC406-AFRINIC
status:         ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by:         ONECOM-MNT
remarks:        Wimax and Fiber  Roll out for Central Kenya Region
source:         AFRINIC # Filtered
parent:         41.203.208.0 - 41.203.223.255

So a Kenyan ISP. But how were they accessing us? We did some analysis.

Of the 65,851 requests, there were 33,261 requests to a Business Profile page, i.e. accessing the contact details for a business.

Further details:

• No evidence of automated scraping, this appears to be a team of humans.
• Since 3 Nov, requests originate from a WIMAX connection in Nairobi (41.203.221.138). Prior to that, various addresses.
• Business profile requests are referred by Mocality search result pages having 100 results/page
• Peak rates are 2500 pages per day (1.73 per minute)
• The User-Agent originated from many different IPs starting on 4 September, started scraping on 12 October, abrubtly stopped on 29 October, resumed on 3 November from the Safaricom Wimax IP.
• Pattern of access is mainly 8am-6pm Weekdays, a few hours on Saturday, and never Sunday.
• No other non-robot (IP,User-Agent) combination has such a pattern of activity at that scale (2500/day).

So a person or (judging by the access rate) team of people were systematically accessing our database, during office hours, and it looked like they moved into a new office over the weekend at the start of November. But who were they, and what were they doing?

The Sting

We decided to find out. We made some changes to the site:

• For visitors from the 41.203.221.138 address, we changed the code to serve slightly different content 10% of the time.
• Instead of the real business phone number, we served a number that fed through to our call centre team, where the incoming calls would also be recorded. Our team were briefed to act like the business owners for the calls.

We switched the new code on December 21st.

When we listened to the calls, we were beyond astonished.

Results

I’d like you to meet Douglas. On this call (first 2 minutes) you can clearly hear Douglas identify himself as Google Kenya employee, state, and then reaffirm, that GKBO is working in collaboration with Mocality, and that we are helping them with GKBO, before trying to offer the business owner a website (and upsell them a domain name). Over the 11 minutes of the whole call he repeatedly states that Mocality is with, or under (!) Google.

Between 10am and 1pm on December 21st, we received 6 others just like it (from 5 different Google Kenya employees) before switching back to normal service. We estimate that this team were calling 20-25 Mocality business per hour, since 7 calls over 3 hours, only 10% of calls redirected: 7*10/3= 23.3. calls/hour)

On all calls, the same script is followed – A Google Kenya employee calls a Mocality business and tries to deceive them into signing up for their competing product, by claiming that we are working together.

It gets worse: Here’s a complete transcript ( with translation of the kiSwahili portions) of a another call, in which the caller goes further, claiming that Mocality engages in bait-and-switch practices to try and charge businesses upto Ksh. 20,000 ($200) for their listings. Mocality has never and will never charge for listings. The irony: on the same call, the caller tries exactly that tactic for GKBO’s hosting fees.

I have redacted the details (except first name) of both parties on the call, and highlighted key sections in YELLOW.

What happened next?

Having gathered our evidence, and needing to wait for transcription and translation (as parts of the conversations were in kiSwahili (the local East African language)) of the recordings , and feeling pleased with detective work, we had a lovely Christmas break. I started writing this blog post.

So that we had the latest stats on our return to work, we re-analysed the logs, on Monday 9th January.

There were no further accesses from the IP address 41.203.221.138 after 4pm 23rd December. Co-incidence? or had someone realised we were onto them?

However, there were some NEW strange messages from business owners- they’d apparently been contacted by a call centre in India with the same promise of a website.

So we reran the whole analysis. We quickly identified a new IP/User-Agent combination.

 Results (2)

We found another IP address and User-Agent that accessed two businesses that had been contacted:

IP Address: 74.125.63.33

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/535.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/16.0.912.63 Safari/535.7

WHOIS Information

NetRange:       74.125.0.0 - 74.125.255.255
CIDR:           74.125.0.0/16
OriginAS:
NetName:        GOOGLE
NetHandle:      NET-74-125-0-0-1
Parent:         NET-74-0-0-0-0
NetType:        Direct Allocation
RegDate:        2007-03-13
Updated:        2007-05-22
Ref:            http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-74-125-0-0-1

OrgName:        Google Inc.
OrgId:          GOGL
Address:        1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
City:           Mountain View
StateProv:      CA
PostalCode:     94043
Country:        US
RegDate:        2000-03-30
Updated:        2011-09-24
Ref:            http://whois.arin.net/rest/org/GOGL

OrgAbuseHandle: ZG39-ARIN
OrgAbuseName:   Google Inc
OrgAbusePhone:  +1-650-253-0000
OrgAbuseEmail:  arin-contact@google.com
OrgAbuseRef:    http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/ZG39-ARIN

OrgTechHandle: ZG39-ARIN
OrgTechName:   Google Inc
OrgTechPhone:  +1-650-253-0000
OrgTechEmail:  arin-contact@google.com
OrgTechRef:    http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/ZG39-ARIN

It looks like Google has now outsourced the Getting Kenya Businesses Online operation to India!

Conclusion

Since October, Google’s GKBO appears to have been systematically accessing Mocality’s database and attempting to sell their competing product to our business owners. They have been telling untruths about their relationship with us, and about our business practices, in order to do so. As of January 11th, nearly 30% of our database has apparently been contacted.

Furthermore, they now seem to have outsourced this operation from Kenya to India.

When we started this investigation, I thought that we’d catch a rogue call-centre employee, point out to Google that they were violating our Terms and conditions (sections 9.12 and 9.17, amongst others), someone would get a slap on the wrist, and life would continue.

I did not expect to find a human-powered, systematic, months-long, fraudulent (falsely claiming to be collaborating with us, and worse) attempt to undermine our business, being perpetrated from call centres on 2 continents.

Google is a key part of our business strategy. Mocality will succeed if our member businesses are discoverable by people via Google. We actually track how well our businesses place on Google as a key metric, and have always regarded it as a symbiotic relationship. We are in the business of creating local Kenyan content that Google can sell their adwords against. More than 50% of our non-direct traffic comes via Google (paid or organic). For us, the cost of going elsewhere is NOT zero.

Furthermore, we spend a very significant sum on advertising with Google Kenya. I wouldn’t be surprised if we are one of their largest local customers, between Mocality and our sister site Dealfish.co.ke.

Kenya has a comparatively well-educated but poor population and high levels of unemployment. Mocality designed our crowd sourcing program to provide an opportunity for large numbers of people to help themselves by helping us. By apparently systematically trawling our database, and then outsourcing that trawl to another continent, Google isn’t just scalping us, they’re also scalping every Kenyan who has participated in our program.

I moved to Africa from the UK 30 months ago to be CEO of Mocality. When I moved, Kenya’s reputation as a corrupt place to do business made me nervous. I’ve been very happily surprised- until this point, I’ve not done business with any company here that was not completely honestly conducted. It is important for global businesses to adapt to local cultural practice, but ethics are an invariant. As a admirer of Google’s usually bold ethical stance around the world, to find those principles are not applied in Kenya is simply… saddening.

Someone, somewhere, has some questions to answer.

These are my personal top 3:

• If Google wanted to work with our data, why didn’t they just ask?
  In discussions with various Google Kenya/Africa folks in the past, I’d raised the idea of working together more closely in Kenya. Getting Kenyan businesses online is precisely what we do.
• Who authorised this? Until we uncovered the ‘India by way of Mountain View’ angle, I could have believed that this was a local team that somehow forgot the corporate motto, but not now.
• Who knew, and who SHOULD have known, even if they didn’t know?

Stefan Magdalinski

Nairobi, Kenya

stefan@mocality.com
+254710103500

Update (22:00 GMT 14-1-2011): Google has apologized.

Google has apologized to Mocality, both online and more directly - I personally received a couple of calls from Joe Mucheru, their Sub-Saharan Africa Lead.

I appreciate the speed and honesty with which Google and Joe reacted to this, but there’s a number of points I want to highlight:

• My 3 questions above are key to understanding what happened, and I keenly await the outcome of Google’s internal investigations.
• The most serious issue is not the trawling of our database, it is the behaviour of the Google representatives on the calls.
• The real test is what action Google takes to remedy the damage done, the openness with which they explain how this went so wrong, and what steps they take to ensure this never happens again, in any country, to any startup.
• Apparently, the calls were made by a 3rd party vendor. I can see how this was the case for the activity we saw in Kenya, but the Indian activity seemed to come from Google’s own network. I know (from friends who are Googlers) how preciously that network is guarded. How was a 3rd party given access to it?
• And because people keep asking, no, we have not taken legal action (at this point).

Stefan

That was the best way to sum up the Mocality Business Conferences held last year. The conference brought together business owners from around the country to discuss taxation policies, online strategies and new technologies for small and medium enterprises in Kenya.

Mocality teamed up with Kenyan organizations including Dealfish, iPay, Kopo Kopo, ICT Board, KRA,  KCB, Safaricom, and Uhasibu to discuss topical issues with business owners in major cities around the country.

The team made stops in Nairobi, Nyeri, Mombasa, Nakuru, Eldoret, and Kisumu, each presenting a new perspective to the modern Kenyan SME. Business owners in attendance left the conferences equipped with new tools and ideas that will allow them to venture into and succeed in the ever growing digital market.

For those of you who missed the conference, we have a summary below of the individual presentations which include PowerPoint presentations.

Mocality

Mocality is an online business directory that features the largest and most accurate listing of businesses in Kenya. The online directory is also available in Nigeria.

Mocality Country Manager, Joshua Mwaniki, gave the attendees an overview of Mocality and a brief insight into the new directions that the company will be taking in the course of 2012.

To download and view the Mocality presentation click here.

Dealfish

Dealfish is an online classifieds that features anything under the sun that consumers in Kenya would like to buy or sell.

Dealfish Country Manager, Moses Kemibaro, took the delegates on an interesting journey starting from the birth of the internet in Kenya to the leaps and bounds that it has achieved so far.

To download and view the Dealfish presentation click here.

iPay

iPay is a billing and processing solutions firm specializing in providing mobile money integrations for small, medium sized and large organizations.

iPay Director, Philip Nyamwaya, spoke about the company’s online payment solutions that businesses can integrate into any website to allow their customers to pay using either mobile money transfer or Credit Cards.

To download and view the iPay presentation click here.

Kopo Kopo

Kopo Kopo provides a mobile payment integration system that allows customers to walk into a shop and purchase products using a mobile payment platform making it safer, faster and more effecient for the parties involved in the transaction.

Kopo Kopo co-founder, Ben Lyon, highlighted the perils of using physical money to do financial transactions as opposed to Kopo Kopo’s digital solutions.

To download and view the Kopo Kopo presentation click here.

ICT Board

The ICT Board Project Manager, Kaburo Kobia, brought to light the Kenyan government’s initiatives in the ICT sector which includes the fiber optic network, public sector applications, government IT shared services and Pasha Digital Villages.

To download and view the ICT Board presentation click here.

KRA

The Kenya Revenue Authority was the highlight of each conference and their representatives were literally swamped with questions every time they presented taxation policies for SMEs. We noted that there are a number of business owners who are unaware of taxation rules and policies. Their presentation was a very much sought after commodity.

To download and view the KRA presentation click here.

Uhasibu

Uhasibu is regarded as Kenya’s best accounting package. The online platform is designed for SMEs and is specifically developed for the legislation and workflows present in Kenya. Their online system improves a company’s financial management by generating KRA complaint VAT reports, monitors petty cash disbursement and keeps track of incoming payments.

To download and view the Uhasibu presentation click here.

The Mocality Business Conference 2011 is finally here! And this time round we have pulled out all the stops to enable your business to expand both its potential and reach in Kenya’s growing digital market.

Coming hot off the heels of Mocality’s last conference in July 2011, our new focus is the business owner who is committed to staying ahead of new technologies and expanding his virtual presence with the aim of opening up new revenue streams.

This event, which was initially positioned as an opportunity to educate businesses on Mocality business tools, has transformed into a platform that allows business owners and key sector players to interact and exchange information under one roof.

We have invited key sector participants on board as sponsors and encouraged them to share with delegates on topics in line with this year’s theme, “Growing your Business in the Digital Age.” This may include them merging their products and services within the theme if necessary.

The Mocality Business Conference is a full day event and will be carried out in 6 key Mocality cities over a 2 week period.

Please see the itinerary for the Mocality Business Conference below:

1. 28th of November at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre (KICC), Nairobi
2. 30th of November at the Green Hills Hotel, Nyeri
3. 3rd of December at the Traveller’s Beach Hotel, Mombasa
4. 5th of December at the Merica Hotel, Nakuru
5. 7th of December at the Sirikwa Hotel, Eldoret
6. 9th of December at the Vic Hotel, Kisumu

The need to cover the theme, “Growing your Business in the Digital Age”, came about after we realized that quite a number of businesses have found it difficult to take full advantage of Kenya’s rapidly growing internet space.

With this in mind, we have broken this theme into different topics, and have invited speakers to come and share with the delegates. The chosen topics are:

1. Introduction to E-Commerce
2. Internet Products and Services for Businesses
3. Businesses and Government
4. Financial Services
5. Business Associations
6. New Technologies

We are inviting interested delegates to take part in this one of a kind event that is guaranteed to open up opportunities for your business to expand and enjoy the benefits of digital exposure.

Register now for free by going to http://mocality.eventbrite.com and booking your place!

If you are interested in sponsoring any of the above conferences or future conferences please contact sales@mocality.co.ke for more information.

Here follows the official statement:

On 24 October 2011 MIH Internet (Sub-Saharan Africa) advised that, following a strategic review of its investment priorities, it will be closing down the Kalahari Kenya and Nigeria operations with immediate effect.
MIH launched online retail services in Kenya and Nigeria under the Kalahari brand in October 2009 and January 2010, respectively. This was pioneering work which carried considerable risk. As the performance of the service has been below expectation since launch and reaching profitability was not a reasonable near-term prospect, a decision was made to refocus efforts on other group businesses within the region. Specifically, our Dealfish and Mocality sites will continue to operate.

24 October 2010
Cape Town

For any further details please contact info@mocality.com

The wait is over for all the ‘droid fans out there, mocality is proud to announce our android application, head on over to the android market and download it now:

Mocality Android Application

With the app on your android handset you will always be able to search for businesses, products and services in your locality. Get business information, contact businesses, and view maps of their location.

We love feedback so please send it via the contact us page.

Kind Regards

Team mocality

Download the application directly into iTunes here:
Mocality iPhone iTunes

This application allows you to search mocality’s extensive business directory directly from your phone, without having to open your browser.
For business owners: Make use of Mocality’s free business tools, including the free monthly SMS, business cards, specials, products and services etc.
More details can be found here:
Mocality iPhone Application

Mocality_iPhone_app

Enjoy!

Team Mocality

PS. All Android users should stay tuned, exciting things to come!

Mocality Business networking event
10am-12:30pm

Mocality Agent event
2pm-5:30pm

The business event is open to local businesses whether registered on Mocality or not and will be consist of a brief introduction to the mocality Team, and then an overview of new services available through Mocality, finishing with a Q&A session. The networking event will present great opportunities to interact with the Mocality team and other local businesses in the area.

The Mocality Agent event is open to all existing agents and any agents that would like to learn more about Mocality. There will be some exciting announcements and prizes for top performing agents, with spot prizes for attendees. The event will not be as long as previous conferences, but will still include a feedback session where agents are welcome to share their experiences.

The city schedule is as follows:
1. Nairobi – Monday 4th July 2011
680 Hotel
Kenyatta Ave
City Sq
Opp. Simmers Restaurant

2. Nakuru – Wednesday 6th July 2011
Merica Hotel
Kenyatta avenue
Next to Nyayo gardens

3. Mombasa – Saturday 9th July 2011
Darajani Hotel
Ronald Ngala Str
Buxton
Close to the JCC.

4. Nyeri – Monday 11th July 2011
Green Hills Hotel
Bishop gatimu road
Next to Nyeri Technical Institute Past Standard Chartered bank

5. Eldoret – Wednesday 13h July 2011
Hotel Sirikwa
Oloo Street off Uganda Road
Next to KVDA

6. Kisumu – Saturday 16th July 2011
The Vic Hotel
Kisumu Nairobi highway
Next to Nakumatt Mega

Refreshments will be provided.
Keep an eye on the Mocality Facebook profile or follow us on Twitter for further updates.

We look forward to seeing you all there!
Team Mocality.

The schedule is as follows:

1. Nyeri – Monday 21st March 2011
   Green Hills Hotel
   Bishop gatimu road
   Next to Nyeri Technical Institute Past Standard Chartered bank
2. Nakuru – Tuesday 22nd March 2011
   Merica Hotel
   Kenyatta avenue
   Next to Nyayo gardens
3. Eldoret – Thursday 24th March 2011
   Hotel Sirikwa
   Oloo Street off Uganda Road
   Next to KVDA
4. Kisumu – Friday 25th March 2011
   The Vic Hotel
   Kisumu CBD
   Kisumu Nairobi highway
   Next to Nakumatt Mega

The daily program will start at 10am and there will be plenty of time for Q and A. Bring all your questions and suggestions for improvements, we will have ample Mocality staff to answer them all. Refreshments will be provided.

Keep an eye on the Mocality Facebook profile (facebook.com/mocality) or follow us on Twitter (twitter.com/mocality) for further updates.

Kind Regards
Team Mocality.

Mombasa, Kenya

Jambo Mocals

It’s February 2011, and the first month of this year flew by at a rapid rate! Our Mombasa coverage has expanded dramatically over the last 2 months with over 4000 Mombasa businesses now listed on Mocality, mostly due to the efforts of our Agents – Thank you for all your hard work so far!

On Saturday 29th Jan we held a Mocality Agents conference in Mombasa, and presented a new android IDEOS mobile phone with 1000kes credit and 600mb data to our top 3 performing agents: Martin Kimani Karemeri, Nassir Mkulu and Suleiman Ibrahim Mustafa. Congratulations to all 3!

Agent ID badges are now available to be printed at Zerax Professional Document Center in Mombasa, address details here: mocality.co.ke/zerax

* Update: For Agent ID badges in Nairobi, please contact Qualigraphix, address details here: mocality.co.ke/qualigraphix

Please bring along a copy of your ID and a passport-size photo signed on the back. It takes 30mins to print so your Mocality ID badge can be collected on the same day.

Back at the Mocality headquarters we have been busy preparing to launch in 4 new cities! We will open these up for agents and business owners to list businesses in February, so keep your ears to the ground, because we are going places!

The next 4 cities to be added to our directory are:

• Kisumu
• Nyeri
• Nakuru
• Eldoret

If you have another city or town you would like to add, please leave a message in the comments below.

A reminder to all business owners: if you have a website, you can now promote your business by adding a Mocality badge to your website. Go here for more details.

‘May your horizons be broadened and your road to success kept clear.’ Anon

Hello Mocals!

All of a sudden we find ourselves at the end of a very rewarding and productive year. But don’t be fooled, it was no easy ride! The Mocality Team faced many tough challenges, but we can look back at 2010 with a big smile. We are humbled by the way the Kenyan nation has embraced our service and helped build Mocality into Kenya’s largest and most reliable business directory.

We thank each one of you for your support and feedback this year, it would not be possible without you!

Here’s a quick look at some of the milestones that marked our road this year:

• Grown to over 60000 local businesses listed
• Thousands of consumers use Mocality to find businesses every month
• We launched the Mocality Agent Programme
• Business owners sent thousands of SMS messages to their clients using Mocality’s free business tools
• Three Mocality J2ME mobile handset applications made available to the public for free
• Mocality iPhone application launched

Team Mocality wishes you a blessed festive season. We are very excited for what the future holds and we can’t wait to get started on the great things we have planned for 2011!

P.S. Don’t forget, Mocality is not taking a holiday, so whether you are looking for a butcher, a baker or a candlelit dinner this season, we can help you out!