TELECOMS giant MTN yesterday announced the appointment of Burak Akinci as the chief executive of Simfy, reporting to MTN’s chief digital and fintech officer, Serigne Dioum, and responsible for ayoba, an instant messaging app.
At the end of March, MTN had 5.3 million monthly active ayoba users across 20 markets, and it plans to grow this to 100 million by 2025.
“We are thrilled that an executive of Burak’s calibre is joining us. His appointment accelerates our work to build the largest and most valuable platforms as we target greater digital and financial inclusion across the continent,” said Dioum.
Effective September 1, Akinci will join MTN from Turkcell, where he was the chief executive of BiP, an instant messaging platform with more than 30 million users across 192 countries.
Akinci, who has more than 20 years of experience in marketing, digital businesses and technologies, led the build-out of the BiP platform, MTN said.
MTN said it aimed to capture more than 10 percent of the gross merchandise value of the digital economy in its footprint as it moved beyond the traditional telco-led Mobile Money (MoMo) offering with ayoba, which was an over-the-top service that did not require users to be MTN subscribers.
“We are also targeting 100 million MoMo users by 2025, up from 46.6 million at end-March,” it said.
BUSINESS REPORT