Start-Ups | *iHub

Kopo Kopo grows out of incubation at m:lab East Africa

For Kopo Kopo Inc, a Nairobi based mobile payment services startup, growth could not have been more rapid over the last 12 months. In August 2010, the company was formed, setting up base at the iHub co-working space in Nairobi beginning in early 2011. The company started with a skeleton workforce of two, with Dylan Higgins and Ben Lyon who are its co-founders. A couple of months later the company would succeed to become one of the twenty five mobile startups pitching at the inaugural regional mobile app and developer conference Pivot 25 (now called Pivot East). By the time of pitching at Pivot 25, the company had grown to a team of four by adding Dennis Ondeng and Kibet Yegon to lead the product development team.

The Kopo Kopo team discussing human-centered design

July 2012 was a moment of change for the young company when it won a chance to be one of seven companies incubated at m:lab East Africa’s newly launched facilities. The new incubation space offered a more quiet and dedicated space conducive for team building and “heads down” focus. Incubation at m:lab East Africa also meant improved access to resources, whether investors, mentors, or potential partners.

Apart from raising a Series A financing while at m:lab East Africa, the company also grew its team to twelve by March 2012. Kopo Kopo also completed several iterations of its mobile money-based business intelligence platform and developed an Android version of the service. Other milestones achieved while the company was at m:lab East Africa include establishment of strategic partnerships with mobile operators and business leaders.

Kopo Kopo team at their new premises on 1st floor of Bishop Magua Centre

With the above milestones met and having acquired several hundred enterprise customers, Kopo Kopo officially outgrew incubation at m:lab East Africa on 30th April 2012. The company has since moved location from m:lab East Africa on 3rd floor Bishop Magua Centre to its newly acquired premises on the 1st floor of the same building. The decision to secure space in the same building as m:lab East Africa and iHub was strategic. The company intends to continue tapping into opportunities and access networks associated with being in the technology hub that Bishop Magua Centre has become over the last two years.

Opportunity for Pivot East Finalists

The graduation of Kopo Kopo from m:lab East Africa creates room for other mobile tech startups to join the list of companies benefiting from the Lab’s business growth services. The now vacant incubation slot left behind by Kopokopo is now reserved for the deserving company winning either category of this year’s Pivot East pitching conference on 5th and 6th June 2012

By: John Kieti

14-04-2012

Entrepreneurship m:lab Mentorship Start-Ups Uncategorized

Mini-MBA Training and Start-Up Capital for Early Stage Businesses in Kenya

In Kenya, entrepreneurs with big ideas in the start-up or early stage of growing their businesses continue to find increasing opportunities to access capital and training needed to succeed. One of the opportunities is through the Sinapis 2012 Entrepreneur Fellowship Program. Sinapis is an NGO in Nairobi providing advanced business training, investment capital and mentorship for the most innovative, scalable and sustainable start-ups in Kenya.

Sinapis partners with Acton Business School, an accredited and highly ranked MBA school in the US. Accepted entrepreneurs receive six months of intensive, advanced business training that is customized for early stage businesses. The highest performers that graduate from the Sinapis Entrepreneur Fellowship Program get to compete in front of investors from the US for investment capital of between $10-$100,000. Those that graduate from the program also receive a Certificate in Entrepreneurship from Acton Business School giving them more credibility as business leaders and are presented to other growth financing institutions for larger, secondary rounds of financing. Sinapis is highly selective and is looking for serious entrepreneurs that are dedicated to bringing their idea to fruition.

Businesses must be less than 2 years in operations to qualify, and the CEO must be Kenyan. Though Sinapis accepts businesses across all sectors if they meet their criteria, this year they are especially interested in Agribusiness, IT and Green Technologies businesses. The program is not academic or theoretical in nature but rather practical and focuses on applying concepts learned in class in each entrepreneur’s business. Entrepreneurs joining the program will attend 6 hours of class per week in the evenings and be expected to spend 15 hours on implementation within their businesses.

The program is one of Kenya’s most comprehensive efforts in entrepreneurship training with an access to capital component. Sinapis estimates it to cost nearly Ksh 1 million to put each entrepreneur through our program. In exchange for tuition, Sinapis asks that each business accepted into its program donate 10% of its equity to the NGO. Should Sinapis graduates do well, Sinapis will use the returns from this equity to fund the next generation of start-up entrepreneurs to go through its program. In this way, it is expected successful Kenyan entrepreneurs of today will help tomorrow’s entrepreneurs to be successful and a virtuous cycle will be sustained. If a business does not successfully receive investment capital from the program’s investor base, Sinapis will relinquish the equity in that business. Sinapis also charges a small materials fee of Ksh 24,000 which will be paid in three installments over the six month period. Scholarships may be available for those who truly need it.

The application deadline for the fellowship program is May 15, 2012. Interested candidates may apply online here www.sinapisgroup.org/entrepreneurs.php

More information can be found on their website www.sinapisgroup.org. In addition, an info session on the fellowship program has been scheduled with details below:

Where: Biblica Africa conference room, Dennis Pritt Road, Caledonia Nairobi

When: Thursday, April 19 7-9pm

Why: To answer questions about the Sinapis Entrepreneur Fellows Program from potential applicants. Light food and beverages will be served.

Entrepreneurs interested in the information session may RSVP to karibu@sinapisgroup.org

By: Jessica Colaco

02-04-2012

Community Entrepreneurship iHub iHub-Research Members Start-Ups

Announcing funding from Google to support the iHub community

The journey with Google and iHub over the last 2 years

Google and iHub have grown together with the community over the last two years learning from each other through events such as Ladies Mapping parties, Trainings on Google Earth, Fireside Chats with Marissa Mayer, Office Hours with Bob Aman and Hackathons . These sessions have strengthened our collaboration and through them we have identified areas to work together and strengthen the iHub community further this year.

Joe Mucheru during the 1st year anniversary last year in March

The funding and plans

Today, we are proud to announce funding of USD 150,000 (Ksh. 12M) from Google to support the iHub community. This funding will help accelerate our mission in catalyzing technology innovations within the iHub by providing them with the infrastructure and skill-sets to fuel their innovations to the next level. With this funding, we seek to:

Expand our infrastructure (network and server technology) to provide the tech community with a “sandbox” to host and test their applications
Set up a UX testing lab to provide training on design thinking and carry out UX research in the tech world
Setup the “ExchangeBoard Project” to support high-quality G+ hangouts and display the latest newsfeeds within the tech community
Set up an experimental super-computer cluster environment (“rackspace”) to host data intensive applications with require high performance computing

About the iHub

Founded 2 years ago, the iHub has grown tremendously to become the go to place for all things techie in East Africa. This space is home to many of Kenya’s young entrepreneurs, freelance software developers, designers and researchers. It also acts as a nexus point for them to interact with our network of investors and VCs while providing them with a co-working space.

As entrepreneurs engage with their peers and bounce ideas off each other, a culture of open innovation is nurtured. The iHub has given rise to new promising startups and technologies. With an average membership age of about 24 years, these youth are embracing technology in innovative ways to create sustainable impact in Kenya.

The iHub model has had great impact in the local tech scene and more and more young people are embracing the idea of co-working for their ventures. As a result of constant interaction through collaborations and meet-ups, a solid network and synergistic tech community has grown in Nairobi. Our mission at iHub is simply to catalyze technological innovations in Nairobi, by creating an open space for entrepreneurship, research, hacking and connecting industry stakeholders.

By: Hilda Moraa

29-03-2012

Applications Community Entrepreneurship iHub iHub-Research Members Start-Ups

M-Maji Launch: A USSD application to improve clean water access in the slums

It’s not every day that a mobile application is launched to the accompaniment of songs, dances, and gymnastics. That’s exactly what happened at Sarangombe in Kibera, where a crowd gathered to launch M-Maji (“mobile-water” in Swahili). M-Maji is a mobile phone-based water information system that aims to empower under-served communities with better information about water availability, price, and quality. Water vendors use their mobile phones to advertise on M-Maji and water buyers query the M-Maji database to find the closest, cheapest, and cleanest water. All this is free and accessible on even the most basic GSM phones.
M-Maji was developed by Weza Tele, a visionary firm that applies mobile technologies such as USSD, Mobile Web, and SMS to solve problems. Weza Tele teamed up with a group of Stanford students, as well as Umande Trust, an organization based in Kibera that addresses water and sanitation issues. Because M-Maji is a novel approach to improving clean water access, it was critical to conduct a randomized, controlled evaluation of our system. Weza Tele’s contribution to M-Maji involved requirements analysis, design, development, prototyping and testing.
The problem:
When water is scarce, a resident of Kibera may trek for miles in search of it with no guarantee of success. Simply finding the water takes up valuable time and energy. M-Maji makes it possible for vendors to advertise for clean water at specific landmarks and allow customers to be able to look up the places where they can find water vendors in their specific location through the use of the mobile phone.

: Access to water is limited

How M-Maji works

Step 1: At the start of each day, water vendors notify M-Maji via USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) that they have water to sell, the price they are selling it for,and where they are selling it. They also have the option to advertise whether or not their water is purified. All of these vendor notifications from across Kibera are collected and stored in a central M-Maji database in real-time.
Step 2: Water buyers who are searching for water initiate a USSD session with M-Maji, through which they obtain a location-relevant listing of local water vendors who have water to sell, their price, location, and vendor ratings.
Step 3: If a water buyer subsequently finds out that a vendor misreported water availability, price, or quality, the buyer can file a complaint with M-Maji via USSD. The database will keep track of complaints and alert future buyers of such negative histories through the use of vendor ratings.

Today’s launch
The launch had the honor of hosting government officials such as Chairman of ODM Mr. Ombongo, Area Chief of Sarangombe Mr. Ongweso, Area councillor Kodiao, Chief of Makina Christine Lithwa also availed herself. There were also Stakeholder representatives from Umande Trust among the few were Musimi Boni. Stanford University was also represented by Professors Joshua Cohen and Terry Winograd.

: Presentation from Umande Trust

The launch was breathtaking filled with entertainment from the Kibera Hamlet school who brought a splash of colors to the day with their acrobatic dances and flexible moves, a musician spoke about the importance of water and marveled the crowd. Songs were sung by local primary schools from Kibera, a play was done to showcase the lifestyle of water vendors who were faced with obstacles from harsh customers who complained about the quality of water.

: Presentation from the chief

Mr. Ongweso the Area Chief of Kibera talked about some few challenges that Kibera inhabitants faced. He addressed the issue of contaminated water being something that could be controlled if people took responsibilities of where they dispose waste. He saidSarangombe has five tanks for water and pipes that direct water to different locations however, people always interfere with them and cut them so as to get water. This exposes the clean water to germs and external waste that could as a result cause diseases.
Vendor registration was also being initiated at the launch where we had different vendors putting down their phone numbers and location so as to be part of the system. Customers who wanted more explanation of how M-Maji works were also putting down their names and numbers so as to be given a text of how it actually functions. However, a practical demonstration was done to everyone who came on the simple process of M-Maji.

: Water vendors signing up

Although the code was not activated the people were excited and anticipated the new solution of water access. They were informed of its soon activation and embraced it positively.

By: Hilda Moraa

28-03-2012

Community Creatives Entrepreneurship Events iHub iHub-Research Start-Ups

Design Thinking Workshop at iHub

It was a super cool and interactive workshop with Terry and Joshua from Stanford d.school and Dan from University of Nairobi. If you are a techpreneur,researcher, a designer and you did not attend then you missed out! We learnt a bunch of interesting and eye-opening things.

The workshop started off with an interactive session entitled ‘The Wallet Project’ , an immersive activity meant to give participants a full cycle through the design thinking process in as short a time as possible. The project itself gives facilitators the opportunity to touch on the fundamental values of the d.school that include:

Human-centered design: Empathy for the person or people you are designing for, and feedback from users, is fundamental to good design.
Experimentation and Prototyping—Prototyping is not simply a way to validate your idea; it is an integral part of your innovation process. We build to think and learn.
A bias towards action: Design thinking is a misnomer; it is more about doing that thinking. Bias toward doing and making over thinking and meeting.
Show don’t tell: Creating experiences, using illustrative visuals, and telling good stories communicate your vision in an impactful and meaningful way.
Power of iteration: The reason we go through this exercise at a frantic pace is that we want people to experience a full design cycle. A person’s fluency with design thinking is a function of cycles, so we challenge participants to go through as many cycles as possible—interview twice, sketch twice, and test with your partner twice. Additionally, iterating solutions many times within a project is key to successful outcomes.

The second phase of the workshop, the team went out to understanding how designers approach problems to try to solve them, individuals and businesses will be better able to connect with and invigorate their ideation processes in order to take innovation to a higher level. Teams of 8 had interviews with ‘Mama Njoroge’s’ to find out what they want and possible solutions. The teams got interesting findings such as:

Lack of proper roads to transport their products and services
Lack of storage facilities and lots of food wastage
Lack of an ordering platform to advertise and the vendors to get more traffic for their products
Insecurity and no community policing
No proper water and sanitation facilities
Insufficient capital and financing for business expansion

Summary points:

Point of view= user + need + insight, this is the anchor/focused challenge that grows from empathy.
Often you could build on a bad idea and get a good one that relates to it
Imagination! Empathy! Reframing the problem! Generate alternatives! Iterate based on feedback! Build and test!
Fail Early, Fail often then learn from that!
The fundamental way to test prototypes is by letting users experience them and react to as well as your perception of your users and their needs.

By: John Kieti

28-03-2012

Entrepreneurship m:lab Start-Ups

$20,000 up for grabs in the Mobile MicroWork Challenge

infoDev, a global partnership program in the World Bank, focusing on technology entrepreneurship and job creation, in February 2012 launched m2work for East Africa. Backed by funding and support from UKaid and the government of Finland, M2Work is a worldwide online challenge and a joint project of infoDev and Nokia’s Ideas Project. It asks for innovative ideas for mobile applications that enable people in the developing world to become microworkers.

infoDev uses its vast network of Mobile Applications Labs (mLabs) and business incubators to help tech entrepreneurs from a seed-stage idea to a thriving start-up that creates sustainable jobs. One of these is m:lab East Africa. It is one of infoDevs’ five mlabs in the world. m:Lab East Africa is intended to serve the East African countries of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and Southern Sudan.

M2Work aims to fuel the race for the best ideas and to spark a goal-oriented, global discussion on mobile microwork. Entrepreneurs, developers and creatives need to submit their ideas before April 2, 2012 for a mobile micro-work application that has market potential and can have a meaningful impact.

The ideas need to tackle existing problems or needs that can be addressed by micro-work. Ideas may be submitted alone or as part of a team. It is not just an individual challenge, teams and small organizations with fewer than 50 employees can participate as well. Any tech-savvy students and innovative young entrepreneurs, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and experienced professionals ‘hungry’ for new business, are encouraged to submit their ideas.

With individual cash prizes of up to US$20,000, organizers of the challenge will be assembling a high-profile jury consisting of representatives of Nokia, the World Bank, academia, the micro-work industry and the wider technology investment sector, who will select the prize winners. A total of US$ 40,000 in prize money, with an individual 1st prize of US$ 20,000 will be awarded. The m2Work jury will also award spot prizes and regional cash prizes. The six finalists, who will receive coaching before a final pitching event, from whom the main prize winner will be selected, will be announced on April 25.

The jury will judge all submissions based on the criteria of potential development impact, innovativeness, feasibility and clarity of presentation. They will decide who will be awarded the prizes based on this criteria.

After the announcement of Grand Prize Winner on 18 May, 2012, the global m2Work hackathon from 18-20 May, 2012 will commence. The 48 hour global microwork Hackathon will be organized in the five InfoDevs’ mLabs around the world. The Objectives of the Hackathon will be to help best m2Work ideas to gain momentum toward a sustainable business through a prototyping event, Help ideators to find complementary talent (especially technical skills) and to identify talented team(s) to gain from pre-incubation services offered by mLab.

M2work gives the East African tech community an advantage to also submit their applications for Pivot East and vice versa. Pivot East is an initiative of the mLab East Africa that aims to bring focus on the Mobile developer and entrepreneur community in East Africa. It’s a regional mobile apps. developer competition which will culminate in a pitching conference on 5th and 6th June 2012. The competition also gives companies the opportunity to showcase their applications to Operators, Venture Capital Community, Angel Investors and the ICT community at large, and at the same time the chance to win prize money of up to USD 50,000 for their companies and applications.

Please take a look at the m2Work FAQ and Terms of Service for more details on how to submit as a team or organization.

For more information, visit m2Work’s official website, www.ideasproject.com/m2Work

To apply for Pivot East please Visit www.pivoteast.com

Note: This article is cross posted from the Pivot East Blog

By: Simeon Oriko

13-03-2012

Start-Ups

Problem: 7,000 doctors serve a Nation of 40 million people. Solution: MedAfrica

This post has been cross posted from the World Wide Web Foundation blog here.

In September of 2011, two Kenyan geeks – Mbugua Njihia and Steve Mutinda – presented their unreleased product to an audience of US angel investors and technology experts – you may recall a blogpost we dedicated to this event at the end of last year. Their product, MedAfrica focuses on delivering basic information about health and medicine to phones — not just smartphones — and enabling people to use that information on their own.

Now, a few months later, we’ve decided to see what they are up to, and to discover more in detail their continued evolution. Steve Mutinda, the CEO of Shimba Technologies (the company behind MedAfrica), answered a number of our questions:

Web Foundation (WF): Hi Steve. A few months ago on our blog we wrote about MedAfrica, describing it as a service to “deliver access to a wide spectrum of health content and services to millions of Africans from the comfort of their mobile phones”. How would you describe MedAfrica?
Steve Mutinda (SM): Not too different from what you just said. MedAfrica is a Medical Services Content Platform that seeks to create health awareness among consumers from the comfort of their mobile phones. It also seeks to increase interactions and purposeful engagements between health practitioners and consumers of their services.

Presentation of first version of MedAfrica, back in June 2011

WF: It sounds pretty important…
SM: It is, indeed. Many Africans have serious health problems; for example, according to the World Health Organization, more than 30 percent of children under age five show stunted growth. At present in Kenya, only 7,000 doctors serve a nation of 40 million people. But Kenya is rich in mobile phones, with 25 million subscribers (Africa has more than 600 million of them). MedAfrica fills this gap by leveraging the mobile phone. It’s a one-stop shop for health related information important to saving lives. It provides important health information ranging from First Aid – the basic tips, symptoms checker, drugs, doctors – to a list of all registered doctors categorized by specialty, to Hospitals – providing a list of all hospitals including maps to their locations, to sharing Diet tips and Alerts from a variety of important sources.

WF: There is a vast potential user base out there, from what you tell me. Have you managed to attract many users already? What are the main categories of users?
SM: MedAfrica currently has ~~40,000~~ 57,000 downloads (figure updated on 13th of March 2012) through existent stores such as Nokia, Safaricom and Android Market.

WF: How did you do it?
SM: There has been good buzz around, and a lot of relevant promotion. Nokia has played a major role on this: firstly, they supported us with the launch of MedAfrica by sponsoring the event. They also highlighted the product on their Nokia store providing 31,000 downloads. Also other partners and companies have been crucial to this: Safaricom has highlighted the app on their landing page; this has provided us with 25,000 downloads. We also had features in magazines, blogs and social media such as Twitter & Facebook. The health partners have also played a role in creating awareness of the app as a promotion of their own services.

WF: One of the key things for a start-up is to discover what new value you could provide to your (potential) customers and users. How are you working to discover what this value ? Are you involving them in the design and development process?
SM: We use the activations as a way to start engaging with users. On top of that we have interviewed the public, medical practitioners and other players in the health ecosystem on their needs in terms of medical content they require to be made easily available to them.

WF: Can you give us some hint of how you plan to reach sustainability? What is the business model of MedAfrica?
SM: We have worked quite a lot on this aspect, and I think this is one of the reasons that led us to win Pivot25 (http://www.webfoundation.org/2011/06/pivot25-day-2/ ) last year. For the moment, we have seen that the most significant revenue-generating activities come from sponsored advertisements and subscriptions . For ads, we target all the players in the health environment – ranging from insurance firms to hospitals and pharmaceuticals – to be advertisers on our application.

WF: You launched a few months ago. The cool thing about being a start-up is that you learn a lot, and the reality after you launch is often different from what you assumed before. What have you learned in the months since the launch?
SM: We expected an immediate uptake by doctors to get listed on the platform for a fee, which a substantial number did not accept. The main issue was the risk involved in giving out their phone numbers. You may not know it, but Kenya has been hit recently by many cases of fraud happening via the mobile phone through calls and SMS, so doctors are just a bit skeptical for the moment.

DEMOfocus on Mobile Technologies, Fall 2011

Mbugua Njihia of MedAfrica presenting at DEMO Fall 2011 in San Francisco

Photo by Stephen Brashear – Attribution CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

WF: So, did you have to change anything with your strategy?
SM: Yes. We’ve modified our business model to change the revenue streams, as a consequence of the low uptake in doctors’ interest in paying a fee. This stream will be included once a threshold of user downloads is reached and doctors see the cost/benefit to their advantage. We are working on an ad-based model.

WF: Any other significant challenges you are facing?
SM: The lack of sufficient funds is obviously a main issue that we have faced since the beginning. Being at the mLab reduced the need for this, but it’s still a need. But it’s not only that. Considering that our goal is to be able to provide valuable content that covers the entire health spectrum, finding providers and partners is a challenge, especially if they haven’t heard about you before. This also means that some of the resources (cash, time) need to be allocated towards this, and here we are back at the initial lack of funding. It’s a bit of a spiral.

WF: What’s next for MedAfrica?
SM: The immediate plans for MedAfrica is the recruitment of more health service providers and spreading across the continent. For instance, we are getting a health partner that will ensure hand-holding of patients from the app to the hospitals. In the long term, we want to integrate with health facilities systems and also the deployment of back-end solutions for them to complement MedAfrica, such as OpenMRS.

WF: Finally, what’s the significance of mLab East Africa for MedAfrica?
SM: mLab has assisted us with linkages to skilled people who have helped build both the team and the product. For example, the support on our business plan has been pretty helpful. On top of that, mLab also has been useful with device testing: we couldn’t have ensured a good quality of the final application without testing it on a good number of devices, and the testing facilities of the mLab have been pretty important for this.

If you are curious about MedAfrica, Steve has also recorded a screencast of the application, which you can see below:

Also, you can get the Android application of their service directly from the Android store:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shimba.android.med

By: Joshua Musau

11-03-2012

Conferences iHub m:lab Start-Ups

Uhasibu selected as the Best Innovator at AITEC Banking & Mobile Money COMESA Conference

The recently completed AITEC Banking & Mobile Money COMESA Conference saw a new addition this year; The Innovator Fast-track Theatre aimed at providing a structured platform to emerging enterprises that are creating solutions for the financial services sector.

Uhasibu was selected as the Best Innovator and was awarded 1st position. Special emphasis in the juding criteria included the ability of the project to scale, the maturity of the project, the management team involved in the project, and how ready an investor would be to invest in the project.

Uhasibu AITEC winner

The innovation track was organised in partnership with @iLab, NaiPay, mLab, iHub, Digital Age Institute and the Kenya ICT Board. The following industry leaders formed the appointed panel of judges: Prof Joseph Sevilla, CEO, @iLab, Strathmore University, Kenya; Michael Murai, Senior Investment Officer, Frontier Investments Group, ACCION International, USA; Sean Smith, New Investment Manager, Invested Development, Kenya; Andrew Lewela, BPO Manager, Kenya ICT Board; and Preston Odera, CEO, ISACA Kenya Chapter.

By: John Kieti

24-02-2012

Entrepreneurship m:lab Start-Ups

m:lab East Africa in crowd funding partnership for mobile entrepreneurs

A new partnership to help grow and finance innovative mobile start-ups in East Africa has been signed. The partnership is between m:lab East Africa and GrowVC International. It is an arrangement expected to benefit recipients of m:lab East Africa’s mobile entrepreneurship development services. The targeted beneficiaries include and are not limited to m:lab East Africa’s resident incubation clients, app development trainees and contestants in the Pivot East Competition.

It has been observed that the regional tech start-up scene continues to experience growing interest from Venture Capital (VC) firms and angel investors from outside the region. A growing number of such investors continue to scout for entrepreneurs to engage in Nairobi particularly around incubation and innovation hubs. This has however not translated to a correspondingly high number of closed investment deals for local start-ups. An array of reasons exist for this. Among the reasons is the low number of “invest-able” start-ups in the region. Another reason quoted in various local forums is high levels of distrust between local start-ups and investors which can be attributed to knowledge gaps among start-ups and investors alike.

Another major reason for low number of investments being made is the apparent mismatch of expected financing levels among local start-ups and those of investors. This comes about with the existence of minimum thresholds for making investments among venture capitalists. The thresholds typically above USD 500,000 are more than tens of times above the needs of upcoming local start-ups. The thresholds understandably exist to ensure that administrative overheads to undertake investment analysis, due diligence and to cover related paperwork are justified by the size of an investment. A target start-up for this amount of investment would normally need to have strong positive indicators such as significant market traction, being revenue positive upwards of USD 1M annually among other indicators for investability.

The partnership between m:lab East Africa and Grow VC international aims to address the challenge of mismatched levels of financing needs. Grow VC’s crowd funding model model facilitates funding in small steps that make sense for entrepreneurs to get better valuations and for investors to better mitigate their risks. Grow VCs platform is also a nurturing ecosystem where entrepreneurs can connect with experts, funders, team members, new customers and partners to realize their ideas. The platform is designed to help start-up companies to secure initial funding of up to USD 1M.

The partnership takes effect immediately for participants of m:lab East Africa’s Pivot East Competition – www.pivoteast.com. The affiliate network on the Grow VC platform for this purpose is now accessible here.

Grow VC International Headquarters is located in Hong Kong, with offices in the US, UK and Finland. their main offices are located at:

1 Ropemaker Street, London EC2Y 9HT, United Kingdom
845 Third Avenue, New York City, 10022, New York
3905 Two Exchange Square, 8 Connaught Place, Hong Kong

m:lab East Africa is a mobile innovation and entrepreneurship development facility launched in 2011 supported by a seed fund from the World Bank’s infoDev agency. It is hosted by a consortium comprising iHub, eMobilis, The World Wide Web Foundation and The University of Nairobi. Its offices are located in the 3rd floor of Bishop Magua Center along – Ngong Road in Nairobi.

By: John Kieti

22-02-2012

Entrepreneurship Events Start-Ups

Growing list of entrepreneurship competitions as Startup Weekend comes to Nairobi

In the last year or so Nairobi has been treated to a multiplicity of competitions and contest organised to promote local technology entrepreneurship. Depending on whether the chicken or the egg came first, one would argue that this has contributed to significant buzz and interest around East Africa’s growing tech start-up culture.

That the region is experiencing growth in the tech start-up scene is difficult to dispute. Doubting people only need to consider the tech scene’s coverage from global media houses such as The Next Web ( Mnachi Mdema’s article and Francis Pisani’s artice), the ReadWriteWeb (Curt Hopkins article), BBC (Egon Cossou’s article), Forbes.com and CNN (Dayo Olopade’s article) – to name a few.

Some of the entrepreneur competitions in the last one year that I can barely recall are IPO48, Garage48, App Circus, Huawei developer challenge. Some of the contests take a more global scope such as Nokia’s Create for millions Contest, infoDev’s Top 50 competition,Google Android Sub Sahara contest, and Apps4Africa. Other global challenges that are still ongoing include Samsung’s Bada Developer Challenge,the Ericsson Applications Award and infoDev’s m2work Micro-work Challenge.

The list of competitions for 2011 above is almost endless. It is however incomplete without mentioning Pivot 25, the predecessor of Pivot East. Being East Africa’s premier mobile apps competition culminating in a pitching conference in June, Pivot East is to many perceived the grand showcase of mobile entrepreneurship in East Africa.

I have come across arguments in the local tech scene that developers and aspiring entrepreneurs have began to suffer from “competition fatigue” so we should “slow down” on them. I argue that we are not yet having too many competitions and that in fact we cannot possibly have enough contests of this kind in East Africa. This in my view will continue to be for as long as we have not as a society fully embraced the start-up culture. More so we should hold as many such competitions as possible for as long as our upcoming tech entrepreneurs have gaps in access to capital, markets, coaching, mentorship and other related entrepreneurship facilitation.

This weekend of 24th-26th February 2012 comes along with at least one more competition in Nairobi – Startup Weekend. The event will be hosted by Nailab at Bishop Magua Center which is gradually becoming Nairobi’s tech startup building. The competition organization in different locations globally borrows from a common format overseen and supported by Startup Weekend, a 501c(3) Non-Profit organization in the San Francisco – United States. It is designed to be a “54-hour event where developers, designers , marketers, product managers and startup enthusiasts come together to share ideas, form teams, build products and launch startups”. The format is very much like Garage48 and IPO48 and goes as follows :-

On Friday Evening attendees present their best ideas in open mic pitching sessions.
Over Saturday and Sunday teams focus on customer development, validating their ideas, practicing LEAN Startup Methodologies and building a minimal viable product.
On Sunday evening teams demo their prototypes and receive valuable feedback from a panel of experts.

In this weekend’s edition of the event in Nairobi, attendants buy tickets at a fee of Kshs 2,050 payable through M-PESA business number 111666 (received by Growth Africa Limited). Delegates attending the event finale on 26th February only, will pay an entrance fee of KES 500. More information on tickets can be found on the event website http://nairobi.startupweekend.org/tickets/

The organizers have stated in their website engagement of re-known personalites in the industry for speakers, judges and mentors. These according to the organizers include Virtual City’s John Waibochi, ICT board’s Paul Kukubo, Paul Mwachi of Isys Software, Capital FM’s Chris Kirubi, inMobi’s Moses Kemibaro, and Craft Silicon’s Kamal Buthabati. Judging from the results of other weekend long contests held in Nairobi where teams of entrepreneurs accessed prize money, entrepreneurship capacity building, early stage investment and access to valuable networks, I would encourage many upcoming entrepreneurs to take part in this event.

Many more start-ups participating in contests such as Startup Weekend can only make East Africa grow its knowledge economy through entrepreneurship. When more of the upcoming entrepreneurs are empowered with skills, exposure and funding, one can only bet on East Africa being able to showcase great progress in the region’s mobile entrepreneurship. The region’s Pivot East Pitching Conference and other entrepreneur showcase avenues may therefore brace themselves for bigger challenges in selecting the best of the best.