DEMO Top 40: Paysail Helps Businesses and Accountants Run Payroll Via Mobile Money

PaySail is the easiest way for businesses and accountants in Africa to run payroll, file tax and social security and also pay employees via Mobile Money or through the Bank. With a keen focus on simplicity of design and ease of use, PaySail automates every aspect of the payroll process.

Product

With PaySail, payroll taxes are automatically calculated each month, based on employees’ basic salaries. Paysail generates simple payroll reports available in multiple formats (including Excel). Paysail also generates and sends payslips to employees by email. These payslips can be accessed by the employee at anytime, from anywhere.

Value

By providing an extremely easy way for businesses to run payroll, pay employees and file taxes, we want to give local businesses a better payroll experience.

Successes

Our first success was to raise seed funding from the Meltwater Foundation. It’s generally hard for startups in Ghana to raise seed funding of any amount.

Our next success is that we are currently processing payroll for over 60 businesses after 5 months of starting PaySail.

We also ranked 2nd place at the Seedstars Accra event held in June this year.

Currently, we are one of 5 DEMO Africa LIONS who will be pitching in the US at DEMO.

Team

Precious Nyarko, CEO - Precious is a former Corporate Accounts manager at City Investments Company Limited. He is an Accountant by profession and a Graduate of Zenith University College . Precious also years of experience designing user interaction for scalable mobile and web applications.

Samuel Ako, CTO - Samuel Ako has over 5 years programming experience. His specialty is in developing scalable backend infrastructure for mobile and web applications. He also has strong interests in BigData and Natural Language Processing. He has a degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from University of Ghana Legon.

Osborn Adu-Kwarteng, Business Development - Osborn is a Google certified AdWords practitioner and has a degree in Mathematics from KNUST. Osborn loves to develop business strategies and to manage technical projects. Also is also a programmer and spends time developing various software projects using new web technologies.

Development Stack

PaySail is built with Node.js using the Express Framework. We currently host PaySail on Heroku whilst we use MongoDB to manage our data.

Contact/Social Media/Job Openings

Find us on Twitter on @happypayroll. You can also reach us by mail at info@paysail.co. Please visit https://www.paysail.co/jobs to see our job postings

#DEMOTop40 : mergims Aggregates Product Listings from Merchants Across Africa

Online retailing is growing across Africa. Several startups are making strides in targeting these sectors. One of such startups is mergims. Mergims is currently listing merchants to its site and mobile app to allow diaspora members purchase goods or services online for their loved one in Africa.

Product
A website and a mobile application (IOS now, soon an Android app)

Value
Our business model will bring the cost much lower than the 10% minimum charged by Western Union and its lookalikes . The processes will take 5 minutes instead of 2 hours required in average.

Successes

• We have an angel investor with us, Mr Pule from African Angel Network
• We have our IOS mobile App ready
• We made it in top 40 for DEMO Africa 2014
• We are securing partnership with merchants in East Africa that we can not disclose for now
• We have a strong team
• Lot of followers on various social media platforms

The MERGIMS Team

Team
MERGIMS (combination of merging markets was started in the summer 2012) is run by the following people:

• Muhire Louis-Antoine, a Canadian University graduate in communications. As the Founder & CIO and in charge of investor relations Muhire has been in Internet business since he was 20 years old. The Rwanda-born entrepreneur left Rwanda after the genocide and has been living in Canada since then.
• Gilbert Niyo Mugabo, COO, who has been to US and Canadian universities graduated in Logistics, a Siupply Chain Specialist with extensive experience in business administration.
• 2 Partners (Mr Rey Lionel, Accountant; Miss Ayesha Akhtar, Legal manager and Executive Marketing)
• Mr Jean Paul Mugizi, Technical Product Manager and IT Consultant

Development Stack
Confidential

Contact/Social Media/Job Openings
PR : Muhire Louis Antoine ,CIO and Co-founder muhirela@mergims.com

Website : www.mergims.com
Twitter : @infomergims
Facebook: /MERGIMS

Job opening : CEO, Webmaster and CRM with experience and ready to work in  East Africa.

#DEMOTop40 : Nikweli Is An SMS-Based Job Matching Service

Nikweli is a mobile-to-web job matching platform that connects employers and job seekers for service and industry sector positions. Job seekers register their standardized professional details through SMS. We control quality of the database. Employers search and compile candidates online with a click. We aim to expand reach, reduce cost and time, and bring more transparency for employers and job seekers alike.

Product
Job seekers register their standardized professional details through an automatic SMS survey. We have various checking mechanisms to try to make sure the details are as accurate and detailed as possible. Employers search for candidates on our web interface with criteria that are important to them. They can compile chosen candidates with a click. Once the employer pays, they will be able to see the full information and contact details of the candidates they have chosen. The shortlisting process is done. The rest is up to the employers to interview their candidates.

There is a lot of potential for expansion with additional functionalities to make sure the experience is smooth and painless for both employers and job seekers alike.

Value
Problem: In Tanzania, 850,000 candidates enter the labour market each year. Most struggle to find employment due to financial constraints, few connections, and inaccurate knowledge. Employers complain about time and financial cost to find honest and good workers.

Opportunity: With more than 90% of job seekers able to use a simple phone – compared to only 12% with internet access – there is an enormous opportunity to leverage mobile technology to provide a scalable recruitment solution.

Solution: Nikweli is faster, easier and more efficient for employers and job seekers alike than our competitors. Candidates register their professional details from a simple phone. Employers search, sort, and shortlist candidates via an intuitive online interface.

Our main competitors are recruitment agencies, websites with job postings, and two other new job postings through SMS services. We believe our targets and methods to reach our clients are different enough from our competitors that we occupy a good-size niche.

Successes
We have over 600 job seekers signed up. Currently, we are scaling our database to 1000+ candidates. We have 10 employers signed up for trials since our prototype 1.0 was realised. We are pushing for our second phase of employer trials in the next 3 weeks.

We are also in discussions on partnerships with Millicom/Tigo, Restless Development, Dar Teknohama Business Incubator, and other partners.

Current:
Restless Development -presence in the youth job-seekers community
VIBINDO - presence in the informal sector community

Prospective (discussions with partner are ongoing):
TIGO - mobile operator focusing on youth and low income customer segment in Tanzania (and subsequently other mobile operators in the country)
DTBi - business incubator in Tanzania, offering connection with local technology community for building the platform

Awards:
- Semi-Finalist at the Rice Business Plan Competition 2014 (http://alliance.rice.edu/rbpc.aspx); currently under mentorship program from the Rice Business Plan Competition.

- Top 40 Startup Finalist for DEMO Africa 2014 (www.demoafrica2014.com) to present in Lagos, Nigeria in September 2014.

Tifany Tong

Agnieszka Łyniewska

Team
Combined, we have 10+ years of experience in Tanzania, especially in private sector development. Whether in the field, in the city, with private companies or public organizations, we have the business savvy, technical skills, experience, and passion to make Nikweli happen.

Our two co-founders are Tiffany Tong and Agnieszka Łyniewska.
Agnieszka is the original founder of Nikweli. She worked as a private sector development economist at the World Bank in Tanzania and as a strategy consultant in London and Spain. She finished her MBA at London Business School. Apart from the original idea and passion to implement it, she brings to Nikweli business acumen, management skills as well as relationships and knowledge of Tanzanian business environment.

Tiffany is the other co-founder of Nikweli. She has lived in East Africa (Tanzania and Uganda) for over 4 years, working in operations in rural villages and capital cities; with donors and private companies. She most recently coordinated an impact evaluation research project with the World Bank in Tanzania. She brings detailed local knowledge and hard-earned project implementation skills to Nikweli.


Development Stack
Confidential

Contact/Social Media/Job Openings
Web: http://nikweli.com or https://vc4africa.biz/ventures/nikweli/
Twitter: @Nikweli_tz
Facebook: /nikweli.tz
Or email us at info@nikweli.com

#DEMOTop40 : m-MuZiik Is A Music Streaming Service For Feature Phones

Product
m-MuZiik ( formerly MuZik) is a music streaming service for feature phones , first. On-demand, without Internet connection, users access unlimited free legal music and live new music experience on the go. No app to install, no music storage, just SMS an information about a song, and m-MuZiik plays it on your mobile phone.

Value

• Unlimited free music
• Musical listening every where you go
• No apps to install
• No Internet Connection required

Successes
Demo Africa Top 40

Team

• Patrick Mveng ( @adelphepatrick) , CEO & Founder , Looking for Adam 2.0
• Diane Djiele, CFO
• Moïse Keutchatcham, UX Engineer
• Germain Akono, GSM Engineer

Development Stack

• GSM Technologies
• Proprietary Artificial Intelligence algorithms (Machine Learning, NLP, Machine Marketing)

Contact/Social Media/Job Openings
Twitter : @mmuziik
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/pages/m-MuZiik
Email : mmuziik@adelrick.com

#DEMOTop40 : Integrated Medics Is a Medical Info Management System for Hospitals

D8ONE8 Technologies Limited has developed an array of software mostly suited for the African continent. These products include Integrated School Portal, Autoklic, Gospeltunes, Capstone Manager, Mediclue, etc. Integrated Medics is one of D8ONE8's products, and it has made it to the Top 40 list of this year's DEMO Africa list of startups.

Product
Integrated MEDICS is a user friendly, multi-functional, web based Medical Information Management System, otherwise called Medics, designed to computerize all classes of hospitals, while putting into consideration the complexities involved in the medical industry.

Value

1. All medical and non-medical department within hospital on a single platform
2. Best inpatient management platform
3. Hundreds of medical reports
4. Platform and back-end independent
5. The best in time of financial reporting (Get real time balance sheet)
6. Multi-tenants
7. Well documented - no need of special training before use
8. Audit trail
9. Beautiful User Interface and User friendly
10. Highly customizable interface

Successes
Integrated MEDICS is currently running in General Hospital, Niger State, Nigeria.

Team

• Gbenle Oladapo
• Tobi Ogunbode
• Dele Bamidele

Development Stack
Confidential

Contact/Social Media/Job Openings
Web: www.integratedmedics.com
Email: info@integratedmedics.com

#DEMOTop40 : Foodstantly Is An Online Marketplace for Food

Foodstantly is an online marketplace for food. Foodstantly uses technology to provide market access to farmers, food traders and restaurant. We do this by providing them with a mobile –web platform to set up shops, accepts payment, display good, promote goods and deliver direct to millions of consumers across the nation.
The sellers are given an easy simple to use interface to register, set up online shop and start selling through their mobile phones or internet enabled device.

Product
Our 3 main products are:

• Ready to cook: for farmer, food traders, frozen food dealers and restaurants to set up online shop and sell and deliver food stuffs/farm produce direct to consumers. Thereby saving the consumers the stress and hassles of going to the open air market to buy foodstuffs and farm produce.
• Ready to eat: is for restaurant discovery and online meal ordering .Restaurant and fast-food can set up shop, sell and deliver to consumers. Consumers can in the comfort of their homes or offices order for meals and take delivery at their doorpost .Solving the challenges of traffic, hassles, time wastage etc.
• Farm Produce Aggregation: this involves entering into partnership with farms, take delivery from the farm gate of all their harvest, sort it in sorting centres and sell it direct to consumers on the platform.

Value
For consumers we provide convenience and same they time. For sellers we provide them with easy market access and use technology to grow their business without any physical barrier.

Successes
We have sellers from across the nation sign up these are farmers, food traders, food wholesalers and restaurant chains. We also have users registered across the country and monthly our order are growing. We also are opening up new channels and products to complement the existing ones.

Team
We are a 6-man team made up of individuals skilled in business development, marketing and product development.

About The Founder

I'm Uche Ariolu, professionally a lawyer but at heart an entrepreneur; I love building businesses and love creating jobs. I have set up a series of small business from my school days. I worked for a while in the food and hospitality industry and gained a lot of knowledge about the industry as well as worked in the ICT outsourcing industry as a freelancer for 10 years. Just before I set up Foodstantly I set up TicketMyPal an event discovery and online ticket sales platform for shows,events,seminars and entertainment.

Contact/Social Media/Job Openings
Email: info@foodstantly.com
Facebook; Foodstantly
Twitter: @Foodstantly
Instagram: Foodstantly
Web: foodstantly.com
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/foodstantly

We need marketing executives and content writers and graphic designers at the moment.
Phone:08033398189
Personal Twitter:@chayex
Personal Facebook;Uchay Ariolu
Personal Linkedin: ng.linkedin.com/in/ucheariolu/

#DEMOTop40 : Matibabu Prevents and Diagnoses Malaria With a Phone and a "Matiscope"

As per the WHO report 2013 a child dies from malaria every 60 secconds. Current malaria detection methods require a blood sample and diagnosis is then conducted via microscope (30 min) or molecular diagnostic methods (15 min). Microscopes cannot do early detection because of under sampling, while molecular diagnostics don’t give a count of plasmodium. Matibabu excels compared with molecular diagnostics because of increased speed and no blood sampling required, and can detect malaria early compared with microscope

Product
Matibabu is an Application for early, non-invasive malaria diagnosis with a phone and a custom piece of hardware (Matiscope).

Value
Matibabu address malaria disease management by offering cost-effective rapid early diagnosis of malaria which reduces amount of medication, duration of treatment and number of people suffering severe effects of malaria infection. Matibabu offers prompt, accurate diagnosis reducing without painful needle pricks, power challenges, the need for trained personnel, and shortened diagnosis time. It also offers educational tips on prevention and mosquito repellent sound. With potential value of reduced socio-economic costs of the disease for 300-500 million people.

Successes

• UN empowerment award
• UN women @microsoft Imagine cup, July 2013
• Best Project Uganda Local final, Microsoft, April 2013
• HESN USAID TECHCON 2013 best pitch, USAID, November 2013

Team

• Brian Gitta (@gittabrian), CEO & Co-founder
• Joshua Businge, (@JoshuaBusinge), CFO & Co-founder
• Josiah Kavuma, (@JosiahKavuma), CTO
• Simon Lubambo (@SyLubambo), Director Product

Development Stack

• PHP
• windows phone C#
• windows Azure 
• Android
• HTML

Contact/Social Media/Job Openings
Twitter: @matibabu8
Facebook: /Matibabu.thinkIT,
Web: www.matibabu.blog.com

#DEMOTop40 : Online Hisab Provides SMEs With A Cloud-Based Accounting Package

Online Hisab is a cloud based accounting package for Ethiopian SMEs, who are looking for an affordable and easy to use accounting solution. It enhances and facilitates the SMEs’s financial management without requiring prior accounting knowledge and advanced computer proficiency. Online Hisab runs online and charges an annual nominal subscription fee.

Product
Online Hisab has been developed as a cloud-based accounting package that recognizes SMEs' resource limitation, lack of computer proficiency and accounting skills.It allows the SME's to have a bird's eye view of their books, make quick and easy data entries, create invoices quickly, record payments easily, obtain instant insight of business operations all through unlimited data storage and automatic backups guaranteeing data security and safety. It enhances and facilitates the SME's financial management by easily getting the aggregated sales, monitoring the petty cash and generating financial reports.
Our Accounting Solution is specially formatted to match the Ethiopian context with easy accounting terminology allowing rapid integration into daily operations. Accessed on mobile and desktop platforms both in English and Amharic with easy to use dashboard, bank level security, automatic backups, encryption and unlimited data storage.

Value
Online Hisab enables Businesses overcome challenges associated with financial recording, maximize the use of their funds, focus on their core functions, satisfy their customers and comply with tax regulations while contributing to the nations growth and transformation.

Successes

• Founders Award and First Runners up in the enterprise category at Pivot East 2014

Team

• Asmeret Gebre, BSc. in Information Systems and Technology from USIU and Product development Lead
• Selamawit Tesfahuney, Certified Accountant, Chief Financial Officer
• 3 more employees

Development Stack
Webserver: Apache
Database: MySQL
Server-Side programming: PHP
Client-Side Programming: HTML, Javascript etc.

Contact/Social Media/Job Openings
https://twitter.com/onlineHisab
https://www.facebook.com/OnlineHisab
www.onlineHisab.com

#DEMOTop40 : SpellAfrica Initiative Helps Young Africans Speak Better English

Speaking good English is a critical component to help one communicate effectively. SpellAfrica is a hybrid Education for sustainable development Initiative. We focused on developing unique strategies for the purpose of helping Africa’s youths learn better English skills via mobile devices.

Product
A picture is said to worth a thousand words. This is the driving idea behind our new Edugame, “FotoBulary”.  The app uses eye catching images to inculcate English lessons in the hearts and minds of the player. To get to the end, the payer must get the correct answers to all 50 images.
Without any formal publicity, the mVocabulary product of SpellAfrica attracted well over 50,000 users in less than 12months of launch.  We have received positive responses and feedback messages from users.

Sample mVocabulary

Value
SpellAfrica is a youth led organization born out of passion and dedication for the purpose of assisting young Africans to learn better English skills.

Successes
A university graduate in Benin City, ones argued that it is impossible to learn English using SMS. I picked up my phone and read the mVocabulary word of that day to him. Interesting the word was “Cannibalize”. So I asked him the meaning of the word of the day. With all confident he answered “the eating of human flesh by another human being. "The eating of the flesh of an animal by another animal of its own kind”. He actually thought cannibalism was the same with  cannibalize.


Team
Elvis AUSTINS, Founder/CEO
Since the inception of SpellAfrica Initiative about 4years ago, Elvis has won a number of awards in social entrepreneurship, including the GSBI Online program of Santa Clara University, Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship, Stockholm and Startup generation fellowship in Canada, etc. He is also the winner of the 2014 English online exam scholarship of the IATEFL (International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language). He was recently awarded a Microsoft 4Afrika Scholarship.

Erezi Edoreh, Head of Marketing
Erezi is a gifted and passionate marker, with the ability to sell goods and service by making few statements. Before joining SpelAfrica Initiative, He worked with an American insurance company where he gathered years of experience in marketing. As the head of Marketing Operations, he is in charge of designing marketing strategies for SpellAfria Initiative.

Some of the volunteers and students of the SpellAfrica Initiative

Development Stack
Confidential

Contact/Social Media/Job Openings
Email: info@spellafrica.org
Phone: +2347030240731
Twitter:  @spellafrica
skype: spellafrica

#DEMOTop40 : SmartPesa Helps You Make Credit/Debit Card Transactions On Mobile

Following the success of mPesa, many innovative mobile payment solutions are making such transactions less hectic for all people across the continent. SmartPesa enables credit or debit card payments to be taken on a mobile phone, simple as that.

Product
The SmartPesa platform allows a financial institution to quickly and cost-effectively add mobile POS (“mPOS”) to its merchant offerings without needing to modify its existing back-end payment infrastructure or current POS programme.  It has been designed from the ground-up to be secure, scalable and versatile whilst providing greater information to both the financial institution and its customers with its powerful and adaptable merchant platform.

The SmartPesa solution comprises four components:

1. Transaction processing server than fully integrates with a financial institution’s existing back-end payment infrastructure
2. Apps (Android, iOS or Windows) and the ability to integrate into existing Apps
3. Card readers (wide range available and lowest cost)
4. Merchant information platform

Value
Internationally there is a transition from payments in cash to payments by card for reasons of convenience and security.  This is especially true in emerging markets where annual card growth and card payment growth is 21% and 10% respectively.  Only 38% of payments in emerging markets are in cash versus developed markets at 59%.

Financial institutions have understood this trend and are quickly looking to have mPOS to capture this growth.  Current growth in mPOS is 43% per annum and is expected to constitute almost half of all POS devices by 2019.

SmartPesa specialises in emerging markets, providing an end-to-end platform to quickly extend a financial institution’s POS offering to include mPOS.

Successes
SmartPesa is launching in Rwanda in conjunction with the national switch and will be able to accept payments for all banks in Rwanda.  The solution comprises App, server and merchant services.

Discussions are continuing with a number of financial institutions in Africa, SE Asia and South America.

Barry, Co-founder

Thorsten, Co-founder

Team
Co-founders Barry Levett and Thorsten Neumann.  Android and Java developers

Development Stack
Technologies used in the SmartPesa solution include .Net, SQL Server, Amazon AWS/other virtual server environment (as required by clients), Android, iOS, Java (EMV kernel), SugarCRM, Thales payShield and Postillion PostBridge switch.
Also used in development: Freshdesk, WaveApps, Trello, dapulse, Bitbucket

Contact/Social Media/Job Openings
Email: info@smartpesa.com
Web: www.smartpesa.com
Twitter: @smartpesa
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/transactiontechnologies
Google+: https://plus.google.com/106968534150408363578/videos
Looking for iOS developer

#DEMOTop40 : FeedbackPlus Enhances Feedback Between Organizations and Customers

The Company’s name is Consumer Delight Business Services Ltd. Our vision is to help organizations achieve customer satisfaction ‘whatever it takes’, and we want to be held accountable to this standard.

Product
Feedbackplus, is an internet/mobile feedback solution that lets customers give feedback to products and services organizations either via feedbackplus mobile app or feedbackplus.net; and enables organizations to receive, respond to and resolve customers issues, real time, via a dashboard, where they can also access periodic reports with feedback analytic.

Value
To Customers

• Give feedback free of charge
• Give feedback anywhere, anytime
• Get to attach pictures and documents (as evidences) where necessary
• Monitor feedback status real time (On queue, Receiving Attention, 25% Resolve, 75% Resolved, 100% Resolved, Closed)
• Get to confirm resolution before issue gets closed
• Send your feedback as voice message if preferred
• Reach dozens of organizations with the same app.

To Organizations

• Receive customers’ feedback ‘on the spot’ when they are experiencing your products and services
• Monitor your branches/outlets from customers points of view
• Make Feedback a day-to-day part of your customers habit
• Stay in touch with any customer that gives feedback before and after resolution
• Let your employees use their mobile devices to resolve thousands of customers issues anywhere/anytime
• Access periodic reports and analytics including Trends, Satisfaction, Loyalty, Status etc and various Predictive and Prescriptive analytics
• Get customization to your own specific needs

Successes
Mobile app now available on Android, iOS, BB10 and BB07 & bellow devices, and the web application is accessible on 95% of desktop and mobile browsers

Team

• Niyi Falodun  (CEO)
• Enoch Durotoye (Planning and Marketing)
• Linda Ebekine, Busola Alabi, Biodun Ajiboye (Business Development)
• Olaniyi Olorunkosebi – Investor
• Dotun Sulaimon - Advisor

Development Stack
MySql, PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript,

Contact/Social Media/Job Openings
For Inquiries - info@feedbackplus.net
Job Opening - career@feedbackplus.net

#DEMOTop40 : Pearl Dream Delivers Educational and Entertainment Content for Children

Product
The Pearl Dream delivers educational and entertainment value to families and schools worldwide through our DreamAfrica app for mobile, web and TV. Our community of authors, artists and partners help us create a future with authentic and timeless African stories for kids around the world, who get unlimited access to ebooks, audio, animations and games on and offline from the world’s largest digital collection of African stories.

Value
We launched The Pearl Dream, Inc. with a vision to deliver authentic African experiences to millions of people worldwide, on and offline. Our users appreciate the unlimited access to the world’s largest digital collection of African stories for kids through our DreamAfrica app for mobile, web and TV.

Successes

Team
Franco Abott, CEO
Kenyan-born Franco Eugene Abott is the CEO and co-founder of The Pearl Dream®. He graduated from Lafayette College with a degree in Computer Science and presently works as a Senior Project Software Engineer at Lutron Electronics.
FB| LinkedIn

Brian Asingia, COO
Ugandan-born Brian Asingia is the COO and co-founder of The Pearl Dream®. He graduated from Lafayette College in 2012 with dual qualification in Engineering and Economics. He also works for the New York Stock Exchange. An alumnus of United World College USA and International House NYC, he is a global citizen.

Development Stack
Our wordpress website is hosted on Azure. We use YUDU, a mobile publishing platform, to deliver our stories on iOS and Android. We plan to launch on TV soon.

Contact/Social Media/Job Openings
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ThePearlDreamInc
Twitter https://twitter.com/thepearldream
The Pearl Dream on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-pearl-dream-inc
DreamAfrica on Android

DreamAfrica on iOS

#DEMOTop40 : Telecosys Transforms Business Assurance Services With VeriSure

Telecosys has been founded this year with a group of entrepreneurs with solid experience in Telecom. With a major focus on Business Assurance problems in Telecom, Telecosys has started its journey with the aim to provide Telecom industry with  new innovative software solutions in the different domains.

Product
Telecosys is delivering VeriSure; a new innovative software solution aiming at transforming the Business Assurance solutions into automated and real-time solutions.Unlike other products in the market,  VeriSure solves the Revenue Leakage and Customer Experience problems at a Telecom operator in a real-time proactive manner, saving the operator millions of dollars loss and protecting the operator’s customer base from churn.

Value

• VeriSure saves 0.55% to 5.5% of operator’s revenue (millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars) from leakage and loss.
• VeriSure kills 32% of customer churn at a Telecom Operator.

Successes
The product has made it to the Top 40 List of the DEMO Africa event in Nigeria.

Team
Shady Hatem, CEO
Shady has more than six years of experience in software development and five years of Telecom experience in multinational giant operators with focus on billing, service fulfillment, and revenue assurance. After receiving a business degree from Maastricht Business School, Shady has decided to start his own company in the same domain of his expertise.

Mohamed Esmat, Business Development Director
Mohamed has more than 10 years of overall experience in the software industry, seven years in Telecom delivering projects for national and international markets (Germany and UK).He also has more than two years of hands-on experience in new product development from idea to market Mohamed is originally a computer science graduate with an executive masters degree in business.

Moataz Tarek, Software Developer
Moataz is a computer science graduate with more than three years of experience in software development and Business Intelligence.

Development Stack
Cannot share the development stack for confidentiality purpose, however we can share high level diagram demonstrating how VeriSure plugs into a Telecom operator’s environment like the one below:

Contact/Social Media/Job Openings
Twitter: @Telecosys
LinkedIn: Telecosys

#DEMOTop40 : Jifunza Creates Language Learning Tools For African Languages

Language tools have become a great way of translating local languages. Such projects have been a great way of preserving African culture. Jifunza contributes to this by creating language learning tools for African languages.

Product
We make an app called Menya that helps users learn African languages. Menya crowd-sourced its content from its users. The learning takes place via simple mini-games in the app.

Value
Menya crowd-sources the learning recordings from its users. We don't restrict the app to any particular language, and we are hoping to bring online the thousands of African languages that were previously not found in digital educational media.

Successes

• The team has qualified to the Top 40 list of the DEMO Africa 2014.

Derek, CEO of Jifunza

Team

• Derek Blair, CEO, has a degree in Math from Simon Fraser University in Canada. He was worked at Microsoft Game Studios in Vancouver as well as AirG the largest mobile social network in the world. He is a passionate software engineer with a love for Africa and languages.
• Yves Niyonshuti, Lead Developer, is an IT graduate from Tumba college. He was worked as a web site administrator for various local organizations as well as a student leader during his time at college. He has also worked as a translator in Rwanda.

Development Stack
We are using Parse as the backend for our iOS and Android apps. The web version is based on
Express , Parse , and Phasor.io HTML game engine. We then use Cacoon.js to optimize the HTML5 experience for mobile.

Contact/Social Media/Job Openings
Twitter : @playjifunza
Facebook: fb.com/jifunza
Web: Jifunza.io
Email: info@jifunza.io

#DEMOTop40 : SokoNect Connects Small Scale Farmers To Buyers of Farm Products

Innovations in agriculture within the continent keeps growing as many business find ways of applying technology to one of the most sustainable sectors in the African economy.

Product
SokoNect is an agribusiness solution that uses mobile technology to link small scale Farmers to the Buyers of Horticultural products, domestic animals as well as agricultural service providers in the within their locality.

Value
SokoNect ensures that rural farmers gain access to a market at the comfort of their farms without relying on middlemen who are connected to markets and end users/buyers and can get the crop to the market where the local farmer cannot, gaining much more than the farmer.
The middle men dictate the prices of the produce, and since the farmer does not have ability to market his produce or access to real time crop prices, he accepts what the middle man offers.

Successes

• SokoNect is an award winning mobile Application that emerged category winner in the just concluded Safaricom Appwiz challenge 2013 in the agriculture category.
• We were also privileged to be finalist of Pivot east http://www.pivoteast.com/finalists-2014/society/ 
• We have been nominated to participate in World Summit Award (www.wsa-mobile.org)
• Our admisssion to Demo Africa 2014 is an achievement in itself. http://www.demo-africa.com/

Team

1. Mbuvi Nyamai, Chief Executive Officer, (Founder & Developer), +254727237254, director@sokonect.com
2. Dorcas Owino, Product Manager, +254 72902 7734, productsmanager@sokonect.com
3. Isaac Mutunga, Co-Founder- Farmer, +254725840365, isaacmutinda3@gmail.com
4. Ester Monchari, Marketing Officer, +254723405547, ester@sokonect.com

Development Stack
Android,
J2ME,
WEB(HTML,JAVASCRIPT,CSS,PHP MYSQL)

Contact/Social Media/Job Openings
FACEBOOK      https://www.facebook.com/sokonect2014
TWITTER      @NyamaiJ
SKYPE          jay.mbuvi
WEB              http://www.appbeesafrica.com/
PRODUCT    http://sokonect.com/

#DEMOTop40 : VotoMobile Improves Engagement Between Citizens and Organizations

When it comes to designing policies for citizens, most uneducated and unreached groups are not heard. VOTO is a designed-in-Africa platform that enables organizations to easily launch real-time feedback, health education, behaviour change and policy design programs across sectors. Our clients get 10X better engagement than SMS methods.

Product
VOTO is a web-based platform that helps our partners distribute and collect information by engaging difficult-to-reach populations through any mobile phone. We specialize in interactive voice calls (including IVR) in local languages, instantly reaching across distance, language, and literacy barriers. Our platform works in every country in the world, and is particularly well-suited for Africa and South Asia. VOTO also has an API to power existing mobile service providers.

Value
Traditional ways of engaging the world’s poorest people are expensive, inefficient, and leave the most marginalized people out of the conversation. Distance, infrastructure, and language/literacy create barriers to insightful communication; the result is many unheard voices and a lack of reach and feedback for products/programs. Eg: health programs (like maternal education or ebola prevention) struggle to reach rural non-literate people (often women). Through our first-hand experiences with the limitations to citizen engagement, and observing the rapid growth in mobile penetration, we developed a mobile information sharing and feedback platform. After results from initial SMS surveys yielded low-response rates and a bias towards male and urban respondents, we focused our platform on voice engagement. Voice has the benefits of cutting across language and literacy abilities, as well as providing richer engagement and trust building opportunities. With voice our partner now get >10x participation rate compared to SMS, with near even female/male and rural/urban participation!

Successes
In 18 months since our launch, our product has been used by 250 organizations to reach over 250,000 people across 20 countries. Our partners include The World Bank, UNICEF, McKinsey&Co, Innovations for Poverty Action, Farm Radio, CoWater and even Facebook! VOTO is becoming the standard mobile for development platform across sectors. Projects include journalists running national public interest surveys, rural clinics distributing maternal health education, policy makers studying vaccine supply chains, economic development organizations reaching out to farmers, urban planners monitoring water distribution access, and academics researching the effect of public health interventions. We have helped the Gates Foundation redesign fridges along African vaccine cold-chains, the Government of Ghana get feedback on the price of electrical power, and the World Bank increase voter turnout by 30% in Brazil.

The VOTO Team at the "VOTOLandia" in Kumasi, Ghana

Team
The founding team consists of two Canadians (Mark and Louis), along with the founding tech team, two Ghanaians (Rasheeda and George), who saw that there were too many barriers between the billions of people on this planet who are cut-off from the web, and the many many organisations trying to offer products and services to these populations. It’s time to connect the unconnected! VOTO's greatest strength is our rockstar studded and super dedicated team of world-class engineers, designers and client managers. VOTO has offices in Kumasi (Ghana), San Francisco and Toronto. Our team of 15 is is 40% female, 50% techies, 60% Ghanaian and cuts across 4 nationalities. The Senior Management Team (3 people) consists of 3 engineers, 2 MBAs, 1 PhD, a professional banku eating champion, and a Ghana ultimate Frisbee legend.

Development Stack
Laravel, PHP and the open source telephony softswitch, Freeswitch.

Contact/Social Media/Job Openings
arthursarpong@votomobile.org (George)
Twitter - @VotoMobile
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/VotoMobile
We are always looking for rockstar developers, designers, and client managers to join our team!

Read more of such posts under the "DEMO Top 40" tag.

#DEMOTop40 : SpacePointe Makes Retailing Easier Through Its Marketplace

Online shopping is a buzz and a growing industry all across Africa. Owing to the success of mobile payments, most marketplaces are beginning to use the power of online payments to build marketplaces for retailers. SpacePointe is focused on helping African small-to-medium business increase their bottom line while selling online and at their brick and mortar stores.

Product
The SpacePointe product includes the following:

• Online Marketplace for retailers to sell their products without having to worry about the cost of doing it all for themselves.
• Mobile POS Application called PointePay to help retailers receive cashless payments, manage inventory and store operations.

Value
Additional channel of distribution via our marketplace, an opportunity to get new cashless customers in store, manage inventory, offer customer loyalty programs and manage general store operations. When retailers thinks of SpacePointe, they will think: “Now I will be empowered with the help I need to succeed in my business!”

Successes
The team has chalked some successes namely:

• Making it to Demo Africa’s top 40 list is definitely an accomplishment
• Designing an application that will also cater to the textual and compute illiterate retailer. 

Team
The current SpacePointe team is made up of about 20 people. Below are the names of the founding team members:

• Sayu Abend: Founder and CEO 
• Osato Osayande: President, Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder
• Edward Osayande: Chief Financial Officer MBA, CPA, ACA
• Ola Fadipe: General Manager, Retail Operations
• Boye Alagbe: General Manager Vendor Operations
• Karl Abend: General Manager, International Products

Development Stack
Java
PHP
MySQL
Microsoft Azure Environment

Contact/Social Media/Job Openings
Sayu Abend
Email: sabend@spacepointe.com
Web: http://www.spacepointe.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/spacepointe
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/spacepointe

#DEMOTop40 : MyeCampus Helps Students Prepare For Exams With Past Questions

Twelve years ago, the founder of MyeCampus.net Cecil S. Nutakor failed his Senior High School Exams and had to rewrite twice. Unfortunately, every year, millions of students across Africa fail to pass their final exams and are unable to continue their education. Figures from the West African Examination Council show that exams pass rates have been on a constant downward decline since 2005.

In Ghana, between 2008 and 2011 more than half a million students representing 55% fail to meet the pass mark for the basic education certificate exams (BECE). In Liberia, all 25,000 students fail to gain admission into Universities in 2013 (100% failure rate). In Nigeria, the failure rate is at 67% on the average each year. If this trend is not discontinued illiteracy rates in Africa will sky rocket by 2020.

The good news is exams councils across the world have established that 75% of all exam questions are past questions. Therefore logically when students are able to prepare adequately for exams using past questions, exam pass rate should rather be on the raise and not declining.

The challenge however is the lack of equitable access to these past questions and supporting educational materials to enable students practice for exams, only 30% of the population who attend private schools have access, the remaining 70% who attend public schools do not have such access.

Our value proposition is to fill the inequitable access gap by bringing teaching and learning activities online for free, to generate huge internet traffic that will attract advertising, announcement and publishing revenue for sustainability and growth.

Product
MyeCampus.net is a self-pace online learning and teaching platform, which provides access to educational content from all examination councils across Africa in alternative multimedia rich formats such as podcast, video, games, audio books, eBooks, and interactive test engines for practicing with past questions for exams.

Value
MyeCampus.net is positioned to address the problems of falling exams-pass rates, high school dropout rates, inadequate test preps, limited access to educational materials, unavailability of alternative multimedia rich academic content formats, high teacher to student ratios, lack of motivation to teach & learn and high unemployment rates in Africa.

Successes
Ten different institutional pilots of MyeCampus between 2005 and 2010. A total of 2.5 Million+ hits since 2011 with an average of 13,000+ hits per day from 2013. 1500 registered users. 600 active users.

Five International Awards;

1. Global Young Social Entrepreneur Award 2007, awarded by Global Knowledge Partnership
2. Global Innovator Award 2009, awarded by InfoDev of the World Bank
3. Global Student Entrepreneur Award 2010, awarded by the Entrepreneur’s Organization, USA
4. Most Promising African Entrepreneurial Venture 2013, awarded by Venture Capital for Africa. (VC4Africa)
5. First Place, Social Entrepreneurial Business Idea Competition 2013, awarded by the ALTIS School of Business and Society of the  Catholic University of Milan, Italy

Team

• Cecil S. Nutakor, Founder and Chief Executive Officer: Diploma Computer Science, BSc Entrepreneurship & SME Management, MBA Global Business and Sustainability: Social Entrepreneurship Track
• Joel Amponsah, Chief Marketing Officer: Diploma Marketing & Media Relations, BSc Computer Science

Development Stack
Linux Operating System, Apache Web Server, MySQL Database System, and PHP Server-Side Programing Language

Contact/Social Media/Job Openings
Product - www.myecampus.net,
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/pages/MyeCampusnet/162101617158581
Twitter - https://twitter.com/My_eCampus

Office location:
6th Floor, Ghana Multimedia Centre, High Street, Accra, Ghana.

#DEMOTop40 : PrepClass Provides Content To Help Students Prepare For Local Exams

Education is one of the sectors least catered for in the startup scene across Africa. Most youth in Africa have been burdened with having to resit both local and sub-regional exams. Prepclass NG Limited is an MIT mentored social enterprise that helps students access all the resources they need to prepare for exams.

Product
Prepclass is a web based, mobile responsive platform that provides students with high quality content related to local exams and helps them monitor and measure their preparedness for the exam. Our platform is mobile responsive and works across all sorts of devices.
Our flagship product ensures that students writing uni entrance examinations study efficiently with access to a plethora of past question material and a robust algorithm that allows us determine their strengths and weaknesses.

Value
We provide students access to a plethora of past question material and we have a robust algorithm that allows us determine their strengths and weaknesses.

Successes
We have prepared more than 2000 students with 80,000 total page views. We emerged as the overall winner from Africa at the IndiaAfrica 2014 competition that brought together startup from across Africa and beyond. Currently nominated for 2014 World Technology Award, New York. Invited to showcase Prepclass at the MIT Global StartUp Lab in Boston. Featured by Fast Company as one of the most innovative companies in Africa. We won the TechCabal BattleField Competition in February and we were among the 2014 Nominee Future Awards in the Education Category

Team
Obanor Chukwuweam – is an Ex Rocket Internet staff who has worked for Jumia and shortly for Jovago. At Jumia, he was an online marketing specialist and he managed ad spend of about a million euros on Facebook and Google marketing. He also worked at Google and Ericsson. Chukwuwezam was born into an educationalist background and his family has successfully run an education business for over 20 years. His roles in include Online Marketing, Sales, Fundraising and Public relations, Product conceptualization and Legal.

Ogunlana Olumide – is an Ex Rocket Internet and StartUp Partners Africa staff. He worked at Kaymu as a category manager and helped several sellers on the platform increase their sales. At StartUp partners Africa he worked as a business developer. He was a Nigerian delegate at World Business Dialogue Germany and ISFiT Norway. He is a First class engineering graduate of the University of Lagos. His passion for education stems from his desires to see more young people achieve the kind of success he did while in the university. His roles include; Offline marketing, Content management, Product development/conceptualization, HR.

Asides the both of us, we have a tech lead, a business developer and process manager on the team

Development Stack
Confidential

Contact/Social Media/Job Openings:
All our job opening are either placed on our site or on Jobberman, but we are always happy to speak with very smart young individuals that would like to work with us.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/prepclassng
Facebook: http://facebook.com/prepclass.com.ng
Google+: http://gplus.to/prepclass

Chura, a DEMO Africa Top 40 Startup

Introduction
Our start-up is called Chura which is Swahili name for frog. Chura for us signifies transition in leaping from one mobile network to another.

Product
Chura aims to ease the difficulties users experience in accessing services across different mobile service providers using 4 services namely:-

1. Switch Airtime-Transfer airtime across networks.
2. Buy Airtime-Buy Airtime from any network using any mobile money service.
3. Airtime for Cash-Convert your airtime to mobile money.
4. Bulk Airtime-Send airtime to multiple phone numbers at the click of a button.

Value
The idea was developed when we realised most Kenyan mobile subscribers have use different networks for different purposes.
An example is a subscriber that has one line for calls,another for texts and another for the internet.We thought it would be convenient to be able to serve all these lines from a single point in a fast and convenient way.

With Chura a user benefits from the speed and convenience in doing the following;

• You can share your airtime to a person on another network.
• You can convert your airtime to cash instantly.
• You can buy airtime from any network using your preferred mobile money service.
• You can send airtime to multiple phone numbers regardless of network at the click of a button.
• In short a user has access to the services of every network operator regardless of their home network and we do this with our 4 services

Successes
The product has been launched to enthusiastic reception by the market.In a span of 6 months, Chura has managed to acquire over 700 users with over 50% being repeat customers. We have also enhanced access to the product by releasing an SMS system hence making Chura available to all mobile users.

We plan on rolling out our USSD platform to facilitate easy and free access to our services and also introduce a mobile app for the smart phone market for a better experience for our users.

Team
Chura was started by a group of friends. There are 5 co-founders behind Chura.
Here are the roles of each co-founder.

• Samuel Njuguna - Business Strategist (bg. Computer Science)
• Byron Sitawa – Technical Engineer (bg. Industrial Chemistry)
• Stephanie Gaku – Fund Development and Management (bg. Computer Science)
• Njogu Kinyanjui – Graphics and Design (bg. Architecture)
• Jack Kinga – Developer (bg. Computer Science)

All co-founders are alumni of the University of Nairobi.

Development Stack
Currently we have employed several platforms to ensure maximum utility and access to our services. They include SMS and the web platform that use GSM modules to automate the processes involved in serving user requests. We are also planning to roll out our USSD platform to facilitate easy and free access to our services. We will also introduce a mobile app for the smart phone market for a better experience for our users.

Contact/Social Media/Job Openings
Website: www.chura.co.ke
Email: info@chura.co.ke
Mobile Phone: +254-0704-981-897
Twitter: @chura_co_ke
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chura.co.ke

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