M-Pesa’s Failure in India: Why Couldn’t Vodafone Replicate its Kenyan Success? An International Marketing Case Study (Addendum by Former and Current Executives at the Vodafone Group)

Vodafone’s mobile wallet service, M-Pesa, was originally created in 2007 for Kenya and was extremely successful in providing millions with access to mobile-based financial services. Essentially, a mobile wallet service enables payments via digital money in the form of mobile airtime. According to industry estimates, the global mobile money market is expected to reach USD 112.3 billion in 2021, with a compounded annual growth rate of 39.6% since 2016. Vodafone launched M-Pesa in India in 2013, but by mid-2019 it had announced its plans to merge its mobile wallet business with an associate company or a third party. Clearly, Vodafone had failed in its attempt to market M-Pesa in India even though India is a rapidly growing emerging market with a gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 8.2% in 2018. Currently over 90% of transactions in India are cash-based largely due to lack of access to bank accounts and low penetration and use of credit/debit cards. This not only hampers business but also exacerbates issues like corruption. India is seen as lucrative for mobile wallet providers due to its large population with growing disposable income, rising mobile phone penetration, increasing number of mobile internet users, government reforms, and government investment in telecom infrastructure. Indeed, the Indian mobile wallet market is poised to grow by 150% to reach $7 billion by 2023. Vodafone had hoped to repeat its Kenyan success by using M-Pesa to target Indians who either didn’t have bank accounts or rarely used them. However, it lost its early entrant advantage, and a host of new start-ups took over the market. The dominant player now is Paytm, the fastest growing mobile wallet in India with a 70% market share. This case study examines Vodafone’s marketing strategy in the context of the competitive, regulatory, and cultural challenges in India. The case questions initiate discussions on a wide variety of issues aimed at uncovering why Vodafone’s M-Pesa failed in India and what it could have done differently. The case study caught the attention of Mr. Michael Joseph, Chairman of Kenya Airways, who was the founder and former CEO of Safaricom, a Vodafone investee. After reading the case study, Mr. Michael Joseph gave an interview to Dr. Mona Sinha, Associate Professor of Marketing at Kennesaw State University. In the addendum at the end of the paper, Mr. Michael Joseph explains why M-Pesa did not perform as well in the Indian market as the company had originally hoped

An adaptive-binning method for generating constant-uncertainty/constant-significance light curves with Fermi-LAT data

We present a method enabling the creation of constant-uncertainty/constant-significance light curves with the data of the Fermi-Large Area Telescope (LAT). The adaptive-binning method enables more information to be encapsulated within the light curve than with the fixed-binning method. Although primarily developed for blazar studies, it can be applied to any sources. This method allows the starting and ending times of each interval to be calculated in a simple and quick way during a first step. The reported mean flux and spectral index (assuming the spectrum is a power-law distribution) in the interval are calculated via the standard LAT analysis during a second step. The absence of major caveats associated with this method has been established by means of Monte-Carlo simulations. We present the performance of this method in determining duty cycles as well as power-density spectra relative to the traditional fixed-binning method.Comment: 17 pages, 13 figures, 5 tables. Submitted to A&

Offline parameter estimation using EnKF and maximum likelihood error covariance estimates: Application to a subgrid-scale orography parameterization

International audienceRecent works show that the parameters controlling the parameterizations of the physical processes in climate models can be estimated from observations using filtering techniques. In this paper, we propose an offline parameter estimation approach, without estimating the state of the climate model. It is based on the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) and an iterative estimation of the error covariance matrices and of the background state using a maximum likelihood algorithm. The technique is implemented in a subgrid-scale orography (SSO) parameterization scheme that works in a single vertical column. First, the parameter estimation technique is evaluated using twin experiments. Then, the technique is used with synthetic observations to estimate how the parameters of the SSO scheme should change when the resolution of the input orography dataset of a general circulation model is increased. Our analysis reveals that when the resolution of the orography dataset increases, the scheme should take into account the dynamical sheltering that can occur at low levels between mountain peaks located within the same gridbox area

Falling Snow Estimates from the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Mission

Retrievals of falling snow from space represent an important data set for understanding the Earth's atmospheric, hydrological, and energy cycles, especially during climate change. Estimates of falling snow must be captured to obtain the true global precipitation water cycle, snowfall accumulations are required for hydrological studies, and without knowledge of the frozen particles in clouds one cannot adequately understand the energy and radiation budgets. While satellite-based remote sensing provides global coverage of falling snow events, the science is relatively new and retrievals are still undergoing development with challenges remaining. This work reports on the development and testing of retrieval algorithms for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission Core Satellite, launched February 2014, with a specific focus on meeting GPM Mission requirements for falling snow

The Mtr4 Ratchet Helix and Arch Domain both Function to Promote RNA Unwinding

Mtr4 is a conserved Ski2-like RNA helicase and a subunit of the TRAMP complex that activates exosomemiated 3-5 turnover in nuclear RNA surveillance and processing pathways. Prominent features of the Mtr4 structure include a four-domain ring-like helicase core and a large arch domain that spans the core. The ‘ratchet helix’ is positioned to interact with RNA substrates as they move through the helicase. However, the contribution of the ratchet helix in Mtr4 activity is poorly understood. Here we show that strict conservation along the ratchet helix is particularly extensive for Ski2-like RNA helicases compared to related helicases. Mutation of residues along the ratchet helix alters in vitro activity in Mtr4 and TRAMP and causes slow growth phenotypes in vivo. We also identify a residue on the ratchet helix that influences Mtr4 affinity for polyadenylated substrates. Previous work indicated that deletion of the arch domain has minimal effect on Mtr4 unwinding activity. We now show that combining the arch deletion with ratchet helix mutations abolishes helicase activity and produces a lethal in vivo phenotype. These studies demonstrate that the ratchet helix modulates helicase activity and suggest that the arch domain plays a previously unrecognized role in unwinding substrates

Achieving mitigation and adaptation to climate change through sustainable agroforestry practices in Africa

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Teneurin Structures Are Composed of Ancient Bacterial Protein Domains

Pioneering bioinformatic analysis using sequence data revealed that teneurins evolved from bacterial tyrosine-aspartate (YD)-repeat protein precursors. Here, we discuss how structures of the C-terminal domain of teneurins, determined using X-ray crystallography and electron microscopy, support the earlier findings on the proteins’ ancestry. This chapter describes the structure of the teneurin scaffold with reference to a large family of teneurin-like proteins that are widespread in modern prokaryotes. The central scaffold of modern eukaryotic teneurins is decorated by additional domains typically found in bacteria, which are re-purposed in eukaryotes to generate highly multifunctional receptors. We discuss how alternative splicing contributed to further diversifying teneurin structure and thereby function. This chapter traces the evolution of teneurins from a structural point of view and presents the state-of-the-art of how teneurin function is encoded by its specific structural features

Discrimination of Methionine Sulfoxide and Sulfone by Human Neutrophil Elastase

Human neutrophil elastase (HNE) is a uniquely destructive serine protease with the ability to unleash a wave of proteolytic activity by destroying the inhibitors of other proteases. Although this phenomenon forms an important part of the innate immune response to invading pathogens, it is responsible for the collateral host tissue damage observed in chronic conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and in more acute disorders such as the lung injuries associated with COVID-19 infection. Previously, a combinatorially selected activity-based probe revealed an unexpected substrate preference for oxidised methionine, which suggests a link to oxida-tive pathogen clearance by neutrophils. Here we use oxidised model substrates and inhibitors to confirm this observation and to show that neutrophil elastase is specifically selective for the di-oxygenated methionine sulfone rather than the mono-oxygenated methionine sulfoxide. We also posit a critical role for ordered solvent in the mechanism of HNE discrimination between the two oxidised forms methionine residue. Preference for the sulfone form of oxidised methionine is especially significant. While both host and pathogens have the ability to reduce methionine sulfoxide back to methionine, a biological pathway to reduce methionine sulfone is not known. Taken to-gether, these data suggest that the oxidative activity of neutrophils may create rapidly cleaved elas-tase “super substrates” that directly damage tissue, while initiating a cycle of neutrophil oxidation that increases elastase tissue damage and further neutrophil recruitment

Clinical Aspects of Feline Retroviruses: A Review

Feline leukemia virus (FeLV) and feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) are retroviruses with global impact on the health of domestic cats. The two viruses differ in their potential to cause disease. FeLV is more pathogenic, and was long considered to be responsible for more clinical syndromes than any other agent in cats. FeLV can cause tumors (mainly lymphoma), bone marrow suppression syndromes (mainly anemia), and lead to secondary infectious diseases caused by suppressive effects of the virus on bone marrow and the immune system. Today, FeLV is less commonly diagnosed than in the previous 20 years; prevalence has been decreasing in most countries. However, FeLV importance may be underestimated as it has been shown that regressively infected cats (that are negative in routinely used FeLV tests) also can develop clinical signs. FIV can cause an acquired immunodeficiency syndrome that increases the risk of opportunistic infections, neurological diseases, and tumors. In most naturally infected cats, however, FIV itself does not cause severe clinical signs, and FIV-infected cats may live many years without any health problems. This article provides a review of clinical syndromes in progressively and regressively FeLV-infected cats as well as in FIV-infected cats

Gamma-ray flaring activity from the gravitationally lensed blazar PKS 1830-211 observed by Fermi LAT

The Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope routinely detects the highly dust-absorbed, reddened, and MeV-peaked flat spectrum radio quasar PKS 1830-211 (z=2.507). Its apparent isotropic gamma-ray luminosity (E>100 MeV) averaged over $\sim$ 3 years of observations and peaking on 2010 October 14/15 at 2.9 X 10^{50} erg s^{-1}, makes it among the brightest high-redshift Fermi blazars. No published model with a single lens can account for all of the observed characteristics of this complex system. Based on radio observations, one expects time delayed variability to follow about 25 days after a primary flare, with flux about a factor 1.5 less. Two large gamma-ray flares of PKS 1830-211 have been detected by the LAT in the considered period and no substantial evidence for such a delayed activity was found. This allows us to place a lower limit of about 6 on the gamma rays flux ratio between the two lensed images. Swift XRT observations from a dedicated Target of Opportunity program indicate a hard spectrum and with no significant correlation of X-ray flux with the gamma-ray variability. The spectral energy distribution can be modeled with inverse Compton scattering of thermal photons from the dusty torus. The implications of the LAT data in terms of variability, the lack of evident delayed flare events, and different radio and gamma-ray flux ratios are discussed. Microlensing effects, absorption, size and location of the emitting regions, the complex mass distribution of the system, an energy-dependent inner structure of the source, and flux suppression by the lens galaxy for one image path may be considered as hypotheses for understanding our results.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables. Accepted by the The Astrophysical Journal. Corresponding authors: S. Ciprini (ASI ASDC & INAF OAR, Rome, Italy), S. Buson (INAF Padova & Univ. of Padova, Padova, Italy), J. Finke (NRL, Washington, DC, USA), F. D'Ammando (INAF IRA, Bologna, Italy