Rise of the digital natives: Bergast House

IMAGINE a clan of young digital innovators using technology to solve some of Zimbabwe and Africa’s unique business issues. Imagine no more!

Bergast House is Zimbabwe’s leading digital design and communications agency.

Its services are three-prong: marketing, webbased and print.

In terms of marketing, Bergast House’s services include brand strategy, design consultancy, marketing assessment, public relations, sales development, lead generation, marketing research, press releases, strategic planning, social media optimisation, brand development, presentation design and direct mailer.

The company’s web-based services include social media management, website design, search engine optimisation, blogging, content management systems, pay-per-click management, user-interface design, user-experience design, online banners, animation, influencer marketing, motion graphics and GIFs.

And for print, they do brand development, advertising campaigns, signage and branding.

It seems like a lot, but nothing technology can fail to congregate. The company is young, in terms of its establishment, its human resources and its outlook.

In a few years’ time, businesses in Africa will look unrecognisable from today as internet penetration continues to make significant headway.

“And for a company that firmly believes that is “native to digital”, it’s another major selling point. I think the biggest thing that makes us unique is that firstly, we are young and 60 percent to 70 percent of the population on the continent is young, so we are the best fit to talk to our clients’ audiences. So all our clients’ target market are young people, so who it is better to talk to those young people,” said the company’s founder and creative director, Paul Makaya.

“We understand our clients’ target market better than any other business. Secondly, we are digital so we offer our clients things we understand as young people. We offer our clients digital solutions that are not just on paper but are practical.”

The Harare-headquartered firm’s impressive list of local clients includes Zuva Petroluem, Astro Mobile, Maranatha Group of Schools, the Contact Centre Association of Zimbabwe, Tech24, the Chartered Institute of Customer Management, Steward Bank, and the Zimbabwe Agricultural Society.

Globally, Bergast House has worked with United States-based software giant Microsoft.

Emerging from the dorms of Chinhoyi University, Bergast House now stands on firm footing, with average revenues of US$200 000 annually.

The current status of Bergast House is a long way from the embryonic entity in college dorms.

So what’s the secret?

“Our biggest business principle is to move fast, we try to remove all the things that can slow us down in terms of bureaucracy in our decision-making to really make fast decisions because we are in the internet age and everything is happening quickly. So we see, for example, big corporates locally and internationally who are too slow to change; for example, Nokia - they were too slow to adapt. So our core principle is to really move fast and be agile and to offer our clients our best services,” Mr Makaya explains.

Reflective of the ‘Amazonian’ (Jeff Bezos’ Amazon) principle of alacrity, Bergast House has already made huge steps into expanding into region, initially targeting the

Rwandan market.

Added the founder:

“Rwanda because it’s really a rising country in terms of its economy, and for us it was a strategic country to service the upper end of the continent, this is East and West Africa, so it’s perfectly positioned to service those two markets because we are finding that we are getting a lot of clients in that region.

“So Rwanda, in terms of also the ease of doing business, it’s really easy to register a business, really easy to administrate the business from that end.”

But expansion into Rwanda is just the first step.

“We are currently moving into Kenya as well, working with some of the big corporates in that space, for example the Africa Economic Research Consortium, which is a think-tank for the whole continent.

“As our vision as a business is to re-brand Africa, and what re-branding Africa means is to be in each and every country in the continent and that is our strategy in terms of looking for emerging markets and going into them, finding the biggest brands there and becoming their partners,” said Mr Makaya, a designer by profession.

“In the next five years our goal is to be in emerging markets across Africa, so these are fast-growing economies you can enter and partner with leading brands in those countries. We partner with progressive brands that effect actual change on the ground.”

What business lessons does Mr Makaya have for Zimbabwe’s other budding entrepreneurs?

For one thing, he says, local entrepreneurs should not be afraid to operate formally.

“The cost of not being formalised are high because if you are not formalised you cannot get bigger clients because they have structures, they will ask you for Zimra, for NSSA.

“So the cost of not being registered is big, it will create a situation in which you will always continue to be a sole trader and a small business and as such you will never then grow.

“And maybe that’s why we have a big majority of non-registered SMEs in the country, which accounts for around 70 percent of the current business environment. I am also assuming that is why they are not growing to the next level because they are afraid of formalising.

“Only by formalising can you access international markets, and even local big corporates can become your clients.”

The Bergast House boss, who is married to Munashe, says he draws a lot of inspiration from Zimbabwean entrepreneurs Strive Masiyiwa and Nigel Chanakira.