Copia Global Hosts MIT Global Entrepreneurship Lab Project

Copia Global— the first mobile retail platform built with the potential to serve 750 million middle to low-income African consumers, including those who are remote, unbanked, and unconnected—was among a small number of startups from around the world selected to host a Global Entrepreneurship Laboratory (G-Lab) project in collaboration with the MIT Sloan School of Management, founder of the international entrepreneurial program.

Founded in 2013 by Silicon Valley veterans Tracey Turner and Jonathan Lewis and headquartered in Nairobi, Copia Global leverages a network of digitally-enabled local agents to connect with customers in the manner of their choice, including in person, by phone, text messaging, USSD, or smartphone app. The company is currently serving hundreds of thousands of Kenyans, including those with little access to the internet. Their internally managed, tech-enabled logistics operation achieves best in class delivery costs of consumer goods despite often poor road infrastructure and no addresses.

Three students from MIT and one from Harvard Law School are collaborating virtually with Copia Global on researching successful marketplace supply chains in a developing world context to report on best practices, analyzing the technology in use and any unique processes put in place, and the revenues generated.

They will then consult on what Copia Global should consider putting in place within its supply chain along with creating a financial model on the cost of enabling and adapting technology and processes along with revenue projection.

In light of the global pandemic, G-Lab’s theme this year is “B2G-Lab, Back to Growth.” The international student team includes Chun Man Chow, Ph.D., MIT Department of Chemical Engineering; Keitumetse (Tumi) Molamu​, MIT Sloan Master of Science in Management Studies, ’21; Kunal Sanghani, MIT Leaders for Global Operations Dual Degree Program; ’21; and Cathy Wu, Harvard Law School JD’21, who is a cross-registered student enrolled in the course.

In a statement, the G-Lab team said, “It has truly been a great pleasure working with Copia Global over the past few months on this meaningful project. From day one, we were quickly brought on board and started working closely with Copia colleagues on a series of assignments. Throughout this entire process, we have been grateful for their openness and hospitality. We are fortunate to be the first MIT G-Lab team to work with Copia, and we look forward to seeing the amazing things that they will accomplish in the future.​”

Crispin Murira, Copia’s Founding CEO, said, “We are honored to be working with MIT Sloan’s G-Lab team on this venture and are confident the team will deliver solutions specific to our and our customers’ needs.”

Since 2000, MIT Sloan’s G-Lab teams have worked on business problems with more than 482 startup and growing companies on 643 projects located in 54 emerging and frontier markets across the globe in such critical areas as strategic growth, new market entry, pricing, marketing, benchmarking fundraising, and financial strategy.

For the first time in 21 years, the student teams have been unable to travel internationally to work onsite due to the pandemic. Michellana Jester, Managing Director of G-Lab, says, “We’ve activated our global network of transformative CEOs and other leaders and are creating authentic market understanding—cultural, geopolitical, and financial—through virtual treks in-class sessions hosted by local unicorn founders and other key ecosystem players. These insights are in addition to the core entrepreneurial experience of each B2G-Lab team’s strategic growth project with their host company.”

The teams’ final deliverables include a formal presentation and concrete “leave-behinds” that deliver high-impact tools, which can be put to use immediately.

“For many years we have worked with entrepreneurs across Africa,” says MIT Sloan Prof. Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund and G-Lab co-founder. “Now, as the world battles COVID-19, these men and women show remarkable resilience and offer great prospects for the future.  It is a privilege—and an education—for our students to contribute to their growth.”

G-Lab is one of 15 pioneering Action Learning labs available to students at MIT Sloan. While project activities vary, they are united by common themes, including experiential, reflective, and peer learning; faculty mentoring; real-world problem solving; knowledge transfer; and, perhaps unique to MIT Sloan, a student team engagement intended to have a measurable business and/or social impact. These real-time management challenges bring theory to life.

The MIT Sloan School of Management, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, is one of the world’s top-ranked academic sources of innovation in management theory and practice. With students from more than 60 countries, it develops effective, innovative, and principled leaders who advance the global economy.