At the start of this year, for my 10 Global predictions for 2025, I highlighted the importance of honesty and integrity, to rebuild customer trust. I immediately thought about Uku and Messente. I asked if he’d like to come back after last year’s session.

On the predictions, Infobip’s IPO appears to be already on the way.

After a bout of flu amongst our families, Uku is back, showing the good guys do win.!

Messente’s pricing is simple, cost of the message, plus Messente’s value add. This enables their customers to clearly understand the composition of the price and make a determination on whether Messente adds enough value. Uku was honest, some clients do not see enough value, which redoubles their efforts to build more value.

Johnny opens with taking direction from the boss, Don Dario, and there will be no Meffy for Uku. Which given the awful behavior of Don Dario, has made a Meffy more a smear in my opinion. But back to the Uku.

Johnny asked Uku whose fault is it for AIT? Uku’s answer is, it’s everybody’s in the ecosystem. Which is true, while Johnny was trying to lead Uku to the answer that the carrier is the source.

Carriers are multi-headed. The commercial department runs an RFP and selects the bid with the largest prepayment. Which tends to generate the largest volume of AIT. The SMS product team are left frustrated knowing what will happen.

BT Group and DT have created messaging ecosystems on their networks that stops artificial monopolies being created and has financial penalties for aggregators bringing SPAM onto their networks. As discussed in The Definitive Truth in A2P Messaging.

Uku’s statement holds true as some carriers or their employees, are certainly enabling AIT through their vendor selection, as are some aggregators, as are some enterprises. Remember, Twitter complained about $60M theft from AIT, and the messaging ecosystem did nothing.

Messente is very clear on their website about their work in protecting customers from AIT. Uku’s answer to Johnny is blaming the carrier is too simple, and takes away from the ecosystem’s responsibility in solving this problem. AIT is about 10 years old and the industry fora have done nothing, their code of conduct is a joke.

While Uku advises customers on avoiding certain markets / aggregators / carriers. It does impact his business, honesty delivers a much better and longer term business relationship. We need the industry to follow Messente’s lead.

Uku succinctly defined their ideal customer, not large businesses that have a team to manage the customer theft (AIT), but not small enough for the problem to not be a concern. And significantly, the long term business relationships built on trust tend to last and not churn, or if they do, they quickly come back.

For Uku it’s all about their customer, what industry fora membership gets him more customers, helps him meet the future the needs of his customers. The same with his pricing, which is easy to see the unit costs and Messente value add. Which makes sense on RCS versus WhatsApp? The customer should test across their communities and work out what makes sense for their situation.

Uku recommends Germany for doing head to head testing between RCS and WhatsApp. The processes and pricing are comparable. Making it easy for the customer. Uku then brings up an important point that Germany and possibly the UK are the only markets with that customer focus. Uku would have made a great analyst 🙂

WhatsApp avoids this complexity. Which is a challenge for RBM.

Uku set out the importance of SaaS in Messente’s future. Like we’ve see with Robert Vis Bird Box podcast.

Johnny mentions the Infobip IPO, and how their brokers are lining it up, ‘almost like a meme coin.’ Why wouldn’t Messente be an acquisition target? Uku does receive offers, but the owners see the value Messente can achieve through focusing on SaaS could be significantly higher. So they’re holding the asset because of the team’s potential.

Johnny attempts to sell tyntec, again.

Uku’s response is he’s not interested in a telco company. His focus is software.

Here comes an excellent quote from Uku on RBM, and explains the 16 years of failure the launch (time code 21:00). “It requires large companies with large egos to come together and do something focused on the customer first.” This quote is also addressable to the Camara nonsense, and OneAPI’s failure over a decade ago is a proof point.

Uku shared their annual revenue growth for 2024 was 42%, which in this market is amazing. Well done to the whole Messente team for that result.

I then asked about Mesente’s go to market. Most customers are SMS first, but Messente’s knowledge of in-country performance of SMS, Viber and WhatsApp enables them to craft the package that saves their customers money, yet delivers on their performance targets. Uku’s confidence in Messente’s sales team’s knowledge to win deals is wonderful!

The discussion led to using ChatGPT to enable businesses to ‘automatically’ set up the campaigns. Autonomous aggregation.

A wonderful podcast, and amazing example of how honesty and integrity deliver business results. Well done Uku and the whole Messente team.