Telkom is trying to stop the slow bleed at BCX, its business technology arm, by stitching it together with the rest of the group. The state-affiliated telecoms company has tasked Hasnain Motlekar with combining BCX, Telkom Business and Openserve into a single offering for business customers under a strategy it calls “One Telkom.” The idea is to sell companies an end-to-end package, from Openserve's fibre connection through to BCX's IT and cloud services, instead of pitching each unit separately.
From “stepchild” to shop window
For years, BCX was run as a separate silo, what the group itself describes as a “stepchild” of the wider Telkom business. Motlekar, a 28-year Telkom veteran who has been acting chief executive since IT industry figure Jonas Bogoshi stepped down in March, wants that to end. “This is about actually enforcing and entrenching that way of working that when we go to market ... we go together with the power of One Telkom,” he said in an interview. The problem he inherited is stark: BCX's revenue fell 7.6% to R11.4 billion in the year to end-March, and Motlekar admits the unit has “been conceding market share for the past 10 years.”
Chasing the AI-hungry, budget-tight customer
To turn it around, BCX is reorganising around two types of customer: smaller and mid-sized firms, the “missing middle” too big to be small but not yet large enterprises, and big corporate and public-sector clients. Motlekar says demand is a paradox: businesses are clinging to tight IT budgets under pressure from their finance chiefs, yet “they all want to jump onto the AI bandwagon.” Not everything is shrinking, either: BCX's IT hardware and software revenue rose 19.6% over nine months and its cybersecurity business grew 18.4%, even as older lines fade. BCX runs on thin margins, but group chief executive Serame Taukobong has said Telkom sees value in keeping it, precisely because it opens the door to selling higher-margin services on top.
Whether “One Telkom” can reverse ten years of decline is the test now in front of Motlekar, and the clearest sign yet of how Telkom plans to defend its business customers.
