Zena: Why a good support system is a valuable asset

Dar es Salaam. Having endured a journey that has been a series of leaps of faith amid strife and strikes, Ms Zena Msonde is a techpreneur with a resilience backed by immense support.

She is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and co-founder of Hashtech Tanzania Limited, a tech-driven company that specialises in creating solutions in the logistics company.

The company is responsible, among others, for the electronic ticketing services we now enjoy when we do our regional travels.
The path that Zena has walked to get to where she is today began when she was hired as a sales and marketing executive for an Internet Service Provider (ISP) company.

With zero background in technology, she found herself, mandated by her role, to sell internet solutions, with specific focus on wireless internet and satellites, especially to areas with limited access to infrastructure such as refugee camps.

This was a point in her life where her daily question-to-self was always “How do I even sell this?”

Zena constantly asked herself that question because this was a time when internet understanding and access were not points of conversation that many related to.

For two years she worked this role, picking up better understanding of technology along the way.

An opportunity to delve deeper came up when she had the chance to work a similar role with another company that provides telecom, construction, total facility management, electromechanical engineering services and data centre solutions in Tanzania and the African market.

During the period she worked here, she met her current business partner and co-founder of Hashtech which set in motion the birth of their logistics network company.

It is also when Zena took her first leap of faith, pivoting her entire career trajectory from sales and marketing to building and running tech-enabled ventures.

After talking and planning, in April of 2018, Zena decided to resign from her employer and joined her partner to pursue this dream they now shared. The decision to leave was abrupt, prompting curiosity from her former boss. 

Zena did appreciate the support and encouragement he offered her as well as the safety net to come back to the company should she ever need to.

Her partner, both in business and life, had already set the wheels in motion with Hashtech, having already put together a team and been incubated at the Tanzania Commission For Science And Technology (Costech).

The challenges her partner was facing at the time was the major skills gap in terms of qualified developers which resulted in a lot of outsourced work, cutting deep into their finances. Due to other responsibilities, he was also unable to be with the team full time, making it difficult to maintain that needed consistency in their work.

Before Zena joined the team, the young innovators had already won a grant that provided them with funding to begin building their first product. In May of 2018, the company officially began running and the first product was a geospatial solution, a tracking system for two-wheeled and three-wheeled vehicles (bodabodas and bajaj) that at the time, were reporting high numbers of devastating accidents.

The solution created by Hashtech was both software and hardware. The tracking devices were fitted on these vehicles and had a component of speed management as well.

The software kept track of all these vehicles, providing real-time, clean data on driving patterns and road behaviours.

In 2019, Hashtech began to run its pilot project using this technology they had developed.

The pilot project also wanted to position bodaboda (bikers) riders and bajaj drivers as individuals worth investing in.

Due to the high rates of accidents by these vehicles at the time, it was very hard for these businessmen to find investors willing to give them funds to grow their businesses.
It was also very hard for insurance businesses to step in with this group of individuals due to the high risks they posed.

The project, therefore, became an asset financing project and with the partnership from a bank and one insurance service provider, the pilot took off in the first phase with ten bikes.

During the period, there were no defaulters, not thefts and tampering of the devices on the bikes.

There was no massive damage to the property, only two minor accidents were recorded at the time and every driver paid back their loan instalments in a timely manner.

The whole project eventually ran with 100 bikes but it was not a smooth ride.

Sometime during the course of 2019, as they were preparing to roll out one of the phases of the pilot project, Hashtech was robbed and all their bikes, machinery, tracking devices and every bit of office property was stolen.

This was a major setback and adding salt to that already gaping wound, Covid-19 struck and Hashtech was forced to take a step back to regroup and reorganise.

Through the support of family, they were able to find a place to work and again, tragedy struck and the team once again found themselves at the drawing board, wondering how to proceed. Eventually, fortune struck and upon meeting their current landlord, realised he is a friend of their late dad, to whom Hashtech was built to honour.

Today, Hashtech Tanzania Limited thrives on being rooted to family and the confidence that comes when family chooses to trust your dream and vision and through the ups and downs, Zena credits her journey as one of intense self-realisations and growth from a young sales person to the solution seeker and leader she is today.

One learned key factor for her where technology is concerned is developing the skill and ability to think fast and make equally fast decisions.

These decisions also need to be 360, covering the government, innovators, stakeholders and every other layman.
Regardless of religion, familial backgrounds and even societal reforms, we are at a point in time where we need to give everyone room to pivot as needed.

Also, slowness in making fast and critical decisions necessary for change has resulted in reliance of the few same skilled people available on the market being heavily depended upon which often leads to overwhelmed individuals who produce sub-par work.

Many companies today opt for foreign talent and if as a country, we decide to actively rework our systems, from the roots up, especially in education, we stand a better chance of grooming opportunities from an early age.

As a people, we need to adjust our mindsets and set ourselves to higher professional standards, create reliability and credibility and lose the prima donna mentality that diminishes our credibility.
Zena also shares how taking up her position in a tech company has helped her grow beyond what society and religion has set.

As a young Muslim wife and mother, she stayed true and fierce to her responsibilities and this helped her nurture a team that is respectful of familial values, enabling them to create a healthy work environment.

“Society is beginning to realise the role of women in tech and the impact she can have, given the opportunity to create a solution,” she shares.

“A woman’s natural instinct as a mother and nurturer helps her to create solutions that take into consideration everyone, from the innovator, to the end user and everyone in between; much like a mother would for her immediate and extended families.”

“Telling stories of women who’ve had impact is crucial to changing and shaping the growth, mentality, dreams, aspirations and capabilities of young girls as well as teach parents, caretakers and guardians not to think less of their girls,” she adds.

“As we worked to find our footing with the ticketing product, I remember leaving my husband and little babies every morning at 4am, fast asleep, and driving to Magufuli Stand to teach the youth we worked with how to use the ticketing software and devices for six months and I’d be there till around 10 am, then drive back home, freshen up and go into the office,” Zena shares.

Due to the skills gap in the number of women in the tech space, particularly the development side, Zena has made it her mission to actively groom more girls. Zena’s journey cannot be told without telling the journey of Hashtech and as an honour to family, the story is only about to get a lot more interesting.

Supported by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation