MTN Group announced the appointment of Burak Akinci as Chief Executive Officer of Simfy (ayoba), responsible for the super app ayoba.
Burak Akinci will be reporting to MTN Group Chief Digital and Fintech Officer Serigne Dioum and will be based in Cape Town.

Burak joins MTN, Africa’s leading mobile operator, from Turkcell, where he was CEO of BiP, an instant messaging platform with millions of users across 192 countries. Burak, with over 20 years of experience in marketing, digital businesses and technologies, led the build-out of the BiP platform, which has more than 30 million users.

At the end of March 2021, MTN had 5.3 million monthly active ayoba users across 20 markets and a plan to grow this to 100 million in 2025.

MTN aims to capture more than 10 percent of the gross merchandise value of the digital economy in its footprint. Ayoba, an OTT (over the top) service does not require users to be MTN subscribers. MTN is also targeting 100 million MoMo users by 2025, up from 46.6 million at end-March.