Kenya: Ladies’ Team Wins in IT startup Competition
By Ben Omondi
NAIROBI---After a gruelling 48 hours, honours of the first ICT boot camp start-up event went to Akira Chicks, the all-girls group for their “M-Farm” idea built around a mobile platform to link farmers to the market to provide updates on prices, product requirements in various locations as well as updates on weather.
According to the judges, M-Farm represented an idea that “was practical, relevant and designed to solve a problem affecting over 5 million farmers,” by focusing on how and where to sell farmers’ produce at the best possible prices.
Relishing their victory, Jamila Abbass, a member of Akira Chicks, attributed their success to rolling a well thought-out plan that was designed to tackle a real Kenyan problem.
“We put our heads together when we saw the call to action and after sifting through various ideas, we settled for the M-Farm one that sought to address a problem facing a majority of Kenya’s farmers,” said Jamila.
During the event, over 100 participants presented 37 ideas of which 18 were followed through with the development of a prototype and business plan.
The one-week event, dubbed IPO48 and held at Kenya’s Strathmore University, was co-organized by Garage48.org and HumanIPO, an outfit that follows entrepreneurs and helps them build their company with advice, comments, sales leads as well as providing linkages with venture capitalists.
HumanIPO works as a social media platform, bringing together small investors with entrepreneurs and startups through collaborating and networking via the internet.
HumanIPO co founder David Owino lauded the participants and promised to offer mentorship and follow up support for all the 18 ideas, adding that most of the ideas presented were geared towards local solutions like market access, travel, taxis and virtual shops.
The top three ideas focused on diverse sectors - agriculture, transport and shopping.
Coming second to M-Farm was TaxiMatch, an SMS-based taxi ordering platform, while third position went to MyShilling, an online platform where buyers can get deals and discounts on items, products and services.
According to the organizers, the event shed light on the immense talent pool of Kenyan web developers and also highlighted the need for the developer community to engage with their peers from other disciplines to ensure the delivery of a complete solution.
In this regard, organizers expect the next event to appeal to marketers, designers, accountants and other professionals to complement the design around the IT solutions.
Kresten Buch HumanIPO founder said “We were amazed by the passion by local people, who were building prototypes almost nonstop, daring to sleep no more than 4 hours during the weekend!!!”
“I am really impressed by Kenyan programmers’ motivation. The goal for M-Farm girls is to solve the biggest farmers’ problem - how to sell their product at the highest price and get valid live information on market price but also weather forecast. The same girls are also running a project that teaches women from slums basic programming and designing skills to get them out of poverty,” said Ragnar Sass, president of Estonian Startup Leaders Club.
IPO48 is a boot-camp style initiative to connect the tech crowd in Kenya. The idea was to bring together 100 talented entrepreneurs, programmers, designers and project managers to build new mobile and web services in just 48 hours.
The event, which took place on October 29 to 31, showcased various ideas, before peaking with the new product demos on the last evening. The best team of the event shall receive €10’000 in investment, plus mentorship from European entrepreneurs and business professionals.
The objectives of IPO48 include: demonstrate that great teams can turn ideas into working services in one weekend; show that web and mobile projects can be started with lean budget and really little investment; promote entrepreneurship and startup culture in Kenya and Africa and to encourage networking between entrepreneurs and technical talent.