Garage48 is a 3 day forum, where you get to listen to people pitching business ideas. The ideas to become working products in three days. Started from Estonia (yeah you remember the country where Skype originated from) in April 2010, Garage48 has held 10 events to date. The Kenyan event is being held at Strathmore iLab Africa and will run to Sunday 2nd of October.
At the Garage48 Nairobi, there were 25 ideas pitched and here the ten ideas which made it through the first round and will get the chance to do the final presentation. The order at which they are listed here does not matter at this point. But one of them will emerge the winner tomorrow:
[pullquote]The winning idea will work with Seedcamp London in the coming weeks.[/pullquote]
1. We are open
“We Are Open” is a location based service that aims at providing information to users on businesses that are open at a time of the users convenience.
An individual may want to find out the closest open e.g Supermarket or Petrol station at probably 2:00 a.m in the morning so as to purchase a product of their choice, the simply log in, key in the location, key in the type of business they want to know if it’s open then click on search. The service gives you results with the closest open businesses around you and the physical address and a map to help you with accessibility.
This is aimed at helping the user save time and resources in terms of looking around for an open shop or mall at the wrong end of the night. Mmmh time is the best word to use
Revenue
They plan to have premium listing on their app and also sell essential business information stats to the corporate:
Follow them on twitter @Weareopen48
They are Facebooking here www.facebook.com/Weopen
2. Routify (Tranzit)
Routify is an application which will show you the quickest route to get you to your destination by using crowd sourced data. You get the notifications about traffic incidents along your route and allow you to share this information with your social networks.
At the beginning the application will be free for the users but the team plan to sell the information to the Research groups, GPS manufacturers and interested corporate members
Catch them on twiiter @Routify
Facebooking here
3. Kamat Kab
KamataKab is a mobile solution that enables clients with GPS-enabled phones to locate the nearest taxi cab within their area, pick the cab that is ranked highest (based on other users experience). The users send text message to Kamatakab database to locate the nearest available taxi
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/
twitter: @kamatakab
4. Mistari
5. Darasani
6. Farm Calc
- By the number of hectares. The user feed in the number of hectares and the application will calculate how many people can be fed with the given size of land.
- By the number of people.. User input the number of people and the app will calculate the number of hectares needed to feed the given number of people.
7. Text for Health
Text for Health is a mobile application that allows users to send health related queries to a short code that queries a database portal with all the relevant data and replies to the query via sms. The doctors on the forum will be able to answer the queries as they come.
The users get the sms alert when their queries are answered by the doctor/s.
The system will also fight fake drugs in the market. Text for health will have the database for all the genuine drugs and their expiry dates. With sms based short code the users will be bale to verify whether a drug is fake or not.
8. African hands
African Hands is application aimed at expanding the talents of the local artist. The team will reach out to the artist and allow them to download the app on their phones for free. The artists work will be only to take a pic or video of their work and upload them on the African hands app or website.
Once the upload is done by the artist, the team through the application will take over and connect the artist with the buyers or consumers.
Revenue
The African Hands plan to make money by charging small commission for connecting the artists with the buyers
Follow them on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/AfricanHands
9. Julisha
Julisha is an application which will help service providers to communicate with their clients. For example when you are unable to access the crappy KRA website, Julisha will be able to link you with KRA infomation needed.
The problem with targeting the government arm like KRA is the rigidity within the system, and the self interest. But the good news is, the team behind Julisha are not targeting KRA only.
Follow them on twitter @kuzabiz