After noticing the lack of adequate structures in African companies, Al Ismaili (BASc '07) and Faiz Hirani launched Bamba group
Engineering became the choice of study for Brampton, Ontario-born Al Ismaili (BASc 2007, Electrical) after his best friend and Bamba Group co-founder, Faiz Hirani, headed to the University of Toronto to study electrical engineering a year earlier.
“Faiz and I grew up together competing in math competitions, playing with robotics and logging seriously absurd amounts of time in front of video game consoles,” shares Al. “In that spirit of rivalry, I had to go to a better school!” Knowing UWaterloo’s reputation as the best school for engineering and co-op education, Al knew exactly where he wanted to pursue studies.
That choice paid off. After graduation, he spent time at Redknee Solutions before launching his own company, Bamba Group (formerly known as Bamba Rewards), a platform developed to incentivize employee productivity. “While travelling in Africa, I noticed that not even the largest companies had adequate structures in place to optimize performance,” he explains. “We created Bamba Rewards to solve that problem.” 
Soon after, they launched a non-profit organization where company software and resources would be used to incentivize low-income parents in Kenya to send their children to school rather than allow them to drop out to work. Bamba found their solution addressed a real gap and soon they created partnerships with UKAID, Aga Khan Foundation and Concern Worldwide to help scale up the program. “We now have software running in 250 schools, connecting with 25,000 families and more are coming.”
Bamba Group, headquartered in Nairobi where Al spends 75% of his time, has evolved into three areas of focus. Bamba Business builds and sells performance management software for enterprise, monitoring and evaluation software for NGOs, SMS/USSD solutions, and more. Bamba Loyalty builds and sells different loyalty solutions to retailers and runs a proprietary loyalty program. Bamba Charity uses the software framework and resources to give back to the community through the conditional cash program in partnership with donor funding and implementation partners. Recently, Al has launched an investment fund to target individuals with capital in the developed world to invest in Africa where ROI is very high.
“We are pivoting the organization towards sectors with spending power and social environments where an impact can be made. We’re also striking partnerships and growing our resource pool, looking into scaling our efforts into other parts of Africa. Africa is a land of opportunity and it’s a very exciting time.”
Al spends most of his time in Nairobi and occasionally in Toronto, where a satellite office of Bamba Group is based, providing strategic technical and financial leadership. He has been selected as the UWaterloo alumni Global Ambassador to East Africa.
