We recently had the opportunity to sit down with one of our exceptional employees, Director of BD in Africa Region, Babacar Niang, to delve into his unique experiences, insights, and expertise. In this exclusive interview, we explored different aspects of his journey within our company and gained valuable perspectives on industry trends and challenges. We are excited to share the full transcript of our conversation, where you can discover firsthand the inspiring stories.
Interviewer: Welcome to IPLOOK's Headquarter. Could you please introduce yourself?
Babacar: Thank you so much to give (me) the opportunity to talk today. My name is Babacar Niang. I'm from West Africa, Senegal, Dakar based. I cover the entire African French countries, in West and Central Africa. I joined IPLOOK two years ago and I'm initially design telecommunication engineer. Recently I'm more focusing on marketing and the strategy of sales to help the company to grow on a wide level.
Interviewer: As this is your first time at IPLOOK's HQ, we're interested to know your initial impressions.
Babacar: The first impression that I got is that, the team is a very solid and open-minded team, which means we have enough force and challenge to make this company grow. When I arrived, I met the CEO of the company, Mr.Tom Lyu. He is very open minded, and we made some deep discussions regarding the strategy of the company.
Interviewer: That's great to hear. What's your main goal of this trip to IPLOOK's HQ?
Babacar: I'm here to follow the production and also to support Daniel, Global Project Delivery Project Manager at IPLOOK, for PMO. Usually IPLOOK only provides solution for its competencies. I mean, 4G/5G core and IMS here is totally separated. We provide radio base stations, mobile core, AAA solution. We provide the BRAS/BNG, switches, servers; we provide the cloud, the private cloud. So all this kind of puzzle need to be well organized and managed to provide the best solution for the customer.
Interviewer: You've been with IPLOOK for 2 years. Could you share with us your experience working for IPLOOK in Africa?
Babacar: The situation was not very easy because our main competitor is big company, like Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia and ZTE. But according to the new approach and the strategy I define and now our customers begin to know our brand in Africa and this it's because of the support of the team behind.
Interviewer: Any representative projects to share?
Babacar: Right now the biggest project that we are driving is, in Central Africa, in Congo with Congo Telecom. It's a converged project where we will provide data services, voice and also video. So it's a big challenge for us.
Interviewer: Talking about challenges, what challenges IPLOOK has met in Africa and how has IPLOOK addressed them?
Babacar: When I come in IPLOOK, initially, I have changed the strategy of the group. But I want to emphasize one thing: I have the full support of the management team behind. I mean, Mr. Tom, the CEO and Mr. Jarod, the VP and all other team members. I told them that I feel like to make a new strategy, a new method to go widely, to win a big project. And not to go only for full MVNO or mobile core. IPLOOK, from now, will take the global project and we will contact our vendors, our partners to outsource them some part of this business. But the final signature part will be IPLOOK's.
Interviewer: From your perspective, what strategies can IPLOOK employ to further penetrate the African market? Are there any specific aspects we should pay more attention to?
Babacar: You know the marketing moves from the "4P" to the "4X" now. Initially we have Place, Promotion and Plan. But right now we are more focusing on customer experience. And for providing customer experience, we need to combine the many solutions together, to be more efficient, to penetrate the market and today the employer of IPLOOK must be very open-minded and has a very wide competencies and agile to propose an integrated solution. And now the telecom industry moves from one product, one solution to convergence product and integrated solution.
Interviewer: What is the current state of the telecom industry in Africa? How do you see the telecom industry evolving in Africa over the next few years?
Babacar: The telecom industry in Africa is the same like the global worldwide telecom industry. The future now is the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite. The smart cities, the digital communications, the cybersecurity and all this kind of things need to have a very strong core network. And IPLOOK is already provisioning the core network. And we need to just add some extra modules in our core part to be more innovative in this industry.
Interviewer: What's the advantage of IPLOOK? How does IPLOOK has constantly been differentiating to stay ahead of the competition in Africa?
Babacar: First of all, we have very good price in entrance price, for entry-level customers. Another big advantage of IPLOOK is combining the 4G and 5G together with IMS. We make the combining, the all-in-one. For example, we have one or two products in our roadmap: We combine both 3G/4G/5G and IMS together in one box. This can be a good solution for penetrating the African market.
Interviewer: Would you like to say something to our current customers and potential customers in Africa?
Babacar: IPLOOK is the best choice for the future. It's not just a word, but we have so many projects under development. In the near future, customers will see, going with us will be the right choice and the right way.
Interviewer: Thank you for your time and insights. Enjoy your trip with IPLOOK！
Babacar: Appreciate it. Thank you for the interview.
