Our businesses should transform communities.

Although profits are a major contributor to business growth, the success of enterprises today lies in innovations that return profits and transform communities, the Safaricom Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Bob Collymore, has said.

He explained that clients increasingly want to associate with companies with innovations and products that transform their lives.

Collymore was speaking to officials from corporate companies at the Pakasa forum dinner hosted at Emin Pasha Hotel in Kampala on Friday. He was also the guest speaker at Vision Group's Pakasa forum at Kampala Parents School on Saturday.

Collymore stated that the success of Safaricom largely lies in the concept of identifying the needs of the Kenyan society and developing products and apps to address them.

Safaricom, a Kenya based telecommunication firm, is partly owned by Vodafone in US and the Kenyan Government. It is also listed on the Kenyan stock exchange.

"We look at the immediate needs of our society and try to address them," the CEO of a company earning about $2b annually, said.

Safaricom, which was voted the best managed firm in Kenya in 2015, Collymore said has developed several apps and undertaken a number of projects that have transformed lives of its clients in Kenya, among others, in the fields of education, health and agriculture.

"We are not doing these things really as corporate social responsibility interventions. They are solutions to problems facing our societies," he explained. Safaricom provides a spectrum of telecommunication services including internet data and mobile financial transactions.

The Safaricom CEO also stressed the need for companies to build and retain the trust of their clients and employees stating that businesses begin to suffer in various aspects once they lose the confidence of their major stakeholders.