Business Model of Genesis

Genesis is a relatively new competitor on the market of media Tech companies. It was founded five years ago in Europe (Ukraine), but today, the company has increased its presence on the Asian and African media markets significantly. The business model of the company enables it to successfully manage its subsidiaries in distant regions. A detailed analysis of the company’s business model will help determine the key aspects of its performance.

Customer segments. With its focus on fast-developing markets of emerging economies, the company is one of the largest media holdings in Africa (“Genesis”). Genesis develops its Internet projects for African and Asian customers that can be divided into specific groups, namely, news consumers, viral marketing producers, advertisers, job seekers, and social network users.

Value proposition. For each customer segment, Genesis creates such values as fast news reporting service, content that attracts website visitors and spreads at a high rate, efficient placement of advertising, and social platforms via which people from distant countries can communicate.

To its news consumers, the company offers a number of news portals in both African and Asian countries. For instance, in Nigeria, it created a news website Naij.com that all newsreaders can access freely (“Genesis”). According to the data presented by Index Mundi, in this country, the median age of citizens is 18.3 years with almost 50 per cent of people being between 15 and 54 years old (“Nigeria Demographics Profile 2017”). Therefore, this group of the population is the target audience of the website content. Genesis has launched similar news websites in Kazakhstan, Kenia, and Ghana ‒ Nur.kz, Tuko.co.ke, and Yen respectively, all of which deliver the information fast.

Another value proposal is viral content whereby Genesis designed a global issuer of viral content ‘AmoMama’. Its usefulness lies in creating a community of strong and confident women worldwide by helping them share their stories via video clips. The value that the company brings to advertisers is high-quality data in advertising area and precise calculation of profitability of their projects. Thus, Genesis developed an easy-to-use analytic tool called ‘CPAmatica.’ The application helps to calculate cost-per-lead earnings and generate traffic for leading advertising agencies. In addition, people who want to place their advertisement for free can use a free website ‘Jiji.’ This portal is useful both for retailers and for consumers as it helps find the needed product at a reasonable price.

For its last customer segment, social networks users, Genesis has created a social network platform ‘Hitwe.’ It allows people from different parts of the world to exchange messages, share files and documents of any size. Currently, the number of users is increasing gradually, so ‘Hitwe’ has the potential to become the largest social discovery platform in the world.

Distribution channels. In terms of the values Genesis offers, its main distribution channels are based on the Internet. In particular, the company delivers its products to news consumers through web portals and media applications on mobile phones. To satisfy the needs of its producers of viral content, Genesis places and promotes short video clips on widely discussed social issues or personal viewpoints on AmoMama, which has a large number of viewers.

The company reaches advertisers and job seekers via promotion of its website ‘Jiji’ with the help of other popular sites and direct emailing to its loyal customers. Finally, Genesis reaches the potential users of its social network platform through Internet-ads and promotion campaigns on Facebook.

Customer relationships. The company has introduced a strong system of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in order to meet the needs of the customers and stay connected with them. The CRM consists of websites and mobile applications the operation of which is based on careful analytics. In order to increase the number of visitors and generate traffic, the media agents analyze the latest trends in the readers’ preferences through the number of likes, reviews, and shares. Apart from thorough analysis, the improvement of Internet service quality requires immediate replies to customers’ messages. The users of news portals expect to receive instantly both information and responses to their queries.  To get fast feedback from the audience, the company provides is contact details on each of the sites. The company structure comprises entire subdivisions that work with various forms of CRM in Genesis (“Genesis”).

One more method of maintaining relationships with the customers is addressing their complaints. When a client places a complaint on the website, the first step of coping with it is replying immediately. Thus, not only the customer, but also other visitors of the website will know that the company values transparency and honesty and respects its customers. The second step is to make the dialog with the dissatisfied consumer private and resolve the issue through direct messaging. Concerning communication with customers over time via the platform AmoMama, the portal divides the CRM management into two sections. The first one accepts the readers’ questions about licensing, copyright issues, and press releases, while the second subdivision handles the requests for business cooperation and partnership. Finally, in order to support the relationships with its previous customers, the company periodically sends e-mails informing them on its new projects, recommending certain articles on the news websites, or congratulating a person on some holiday.

Revenue streams. Genesis has monetized their performance online and offline, generating its profit from mobile phone applications and Internet websites. According to the data given by company’s CEO and cofounder Vitaly Laptenok in his interview, the company derives almost 95 percent of its traffic from mobile phones (Laptenok, 2016). In Nigeria, due to the increasing number of Internet-users, the amount of installments of media applications on Android has grown as well. It raised company’s Cost Per Install rate (CPI) and, consequently, directly increased the overall revenue (Laptenok, 2016). With the help of Google Analytics, Genesis processes the data generated by mobile phone applications and reveals the key trends in consumer behavior. All these methods help to escalate the Click-Through Rate (CTR) of the websites. Incidentally, digital advertising is one of the major sources of company’s income. Large advertisement agencies place their advertisements on the news portals and social platforms of Genesis. Generally, revenues depend on the number of visitors, so the cost of one placement depends on the average number of the website’s visitors per day, Pay Per Click frequency (PPC), and time the advertisement appears on the website.

Key resources. Effective management of this media Tech company requires a thorough selection of resources. First, there is a need for human resources, in this case, highly-qualified team of analysts, web-designers, and content makers. To provide them with appropriate working conditions, the company’s founders need considerable financial resources which they spend on the rent of a modern office in the appropriate building with a comfortable location. The offices are equipped with the newest computers and all necessary digital devices, including permanent access to the Internet. Considering the fact that trends in digital market change at the extremely high rate, the company needs to remain competitive and, therefore, update its equipment. Additionally, the company spends its resources on frequent business trips from the central office in Kyiv to African and Asian countries, where Genesis has its subsidiaries. Particularly, they are located in Moscow (Russian Federation), Almaty (Kazakhstan), Manila (Philipinnes), Lagos and Abuja (Nigeria), Akkra (Ghana), and Nairobi (Kenya). In general, the effective team, proper working environment, and technological tools facilitate increasing productivity and improving performance of the company.

Key activities. The key activities of the company include production, sales, promotion, and marketing research. In particular, the media company specializes in making and spreading news. Due to the company’s orientation on African and Asian markets, the content makers of Genesis control their subsidiaries and recipient countries and manage the news. In terms of advertising, the affiliate managers support relationships with the current customers by placing their proposals on the most visited websites. Additionally, the company has to ensure that ads placement brings it the expected profit due to the commission on the affiliate activity. Additionally, Genesis’s performance depends on its Customer-Support Service that is responsible for managing clients’ complaints and maintaining relationships with loyal customers. The analytics team performs Big Data research and makes prognoses about consumer preferences and overall behavior, while the monitoring department is in charge the employees’ productivity assessment on different levels.

Partner network. The overall performance of the company depends on the number of websites visitors. Accordingly, the partnership of Genesis is at close cooperation with the world leaders in Internet media marketing. In particular, the company cooperates with mobile phone browser Opera Mini. It is the most popular browser in African countries because it requires less Internet traffic, which is not always available in those regions. Considering business partnership with Russia, the media Tech company operates within the servers of Mail.ru Group and produces content within its web pages. One of the largest parts in company’s revenues relates to advertising through Google Ads system. A number of marketing approaches and different techniques are applied while using its applications. Therefore, the collaboration with Google and application of its promotional instruments is beneficial for Genesis. The partnership with Facebook is also crucial for Genesis because an account on Facebook enables Genesis to promote itself among Facebook users and attract new employees to its team of specialists. In particular, Genesis applies Facebook to hire IT-specialists.

Cost structure. The large scale of the company’s operations and its trans-border location of subsidiaries demand cost-effective structure of its expenditures and detailed financial plan. With the current prices on office rent as well as the cost of technical and human resources, the company allocates a considerable amount of its financial resources to maintenance of its offices in recipient countries and commits periodical visits to the subsidiaries. During its operating cycle, it pays for the application of Google analytics and other digital marketing tools, promotion campaigns on Facebook as well as semantic analysis in order to ensure that its news goes viral. These costs constitute the major part of Genesis’s expenditures. Additionally, the cost structure includes administrative expenditures, salaries for employees, maintenance services, as well as payment of taxes.

Conclusion. Genesis occupies one of the largest niches on the market of Internet-based media companies in Asia and Africa. Therefore, its business model is successful. Due to its long-term strategy, the company that started as a single office managed to become a competitive media Tech enterprise on the Asian and African markets. Genesis is a prime example of successful start-up, which with minimal costs has grown to a world news provider.