E-lunch voucher firm Sodexo Kenya rebrands

Lunchtime digital voucher firm Sodexo Kenya has rebranded to Apptivate Africa as it plans to launch an Africa-wide network for its products.

Apptivate Africa CEO Neil Ribeiro said the planned expansion was aimed at serving multinational firms that have enrolled 3,000 employees to its products including digital lunch voucher programme M-Kula and shopping voucher rewards scheme M-Tuza.

“Our strategy now is to develop solutions for the consumer. We will allow consumers to send gifts to each other on M-Tuza, and will allow Kenyans to access special offers from our food vendors even if they do not have an M-Kula wallet,” said Mr Ribeiro.

Apptivate’s client Grant Thornton’s People and Culture Assistant Miriam Maina hailed the firm’s development saying the service had addressed logistics challenges associated with assigning staff to prepare shopping vouchers that had to be physically delivered across town.

“Initially, we were issuing the normal supermarket vouchers to our best performers which lacked variety while the lunch vouchers could only be used once. M-Kula is distributed digitally and is acceptable in over 200 eateries,” he said.

A local merchant, Martha Oduya, hailed the online shopping voucher service saying it was a secure cash transfer service that also helped lure new customers to her shop.

“I have been able to penetrate corporate clients whose staff hardly visited my shop. The platform automatically handles reconciliations, invoicing and confirms when money has been deposited on my account,” said Ms Oduya.

Apptivate’s M-Kula online lunch voucher rides on a 2014 law that gave each employee a Sh48,000 annual tax rebate.

The money should be spend on buying staff lunch.