On June 14th and 15th, 25 of East Africa’s top mobile start-ups will be pitching their ideas to an audience of around 500 people.

Where?

At Pivot 25, an event organized by mLab East Africa, of which the Web Foundation is part of (together with iHub, eMobilis, University of Nairobi – more info on the mLab East Africa here:http://www.webfoundation.org/projects/mlab-east-africa/).

The event will give visibility to some very interesting projects from Uganda, Tanzania, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda or Kenya. Entrepreneurs will pitch their ideas and have the possibility to win prizes. Not only, they will raise a lot of awareness around their project: the audience, the judges, the blog/media coverage will help spread the word of the brilliant ideas that will be presented.

The Event will not only showcase developer talent in the region but also bring focus to the mLab and the role that it plays in the mobile application development ecosystem in East Africa. Our goal is to make this truly inclusive, bringing together start-ups, manufacturers, businesses and operators from every country in East Africa: the mLab is accessible to anyone in any of these countries, and Pivot 25 is as well.

How to get involved?

There are few ways to get involved with Pivot 25.

• Enter your startup – the best way to get involved, if you have ideas, knowledge and passion for mobile services. If you make it to the event, the awareness will be huge and the prizes big.
• Sponsor the event – there are already some great sponsors supporting Pivot25, but a few more places are available. Join us to help raise awareness of the potential of mobile services, coming from East African start-ups.
• Register to attend – we expect tickets to sell quickly, so get yours now before they’re all gone.

The star man of the Mobile Monday was the popular blogger and currently Regional Manager of Dealfish.co.ke Moses Kemibaro (@moseskemibaro). Coming back to his amazing presentation later

The Meetup started off with Presentation from Hilda Moraa of M-order..

M-order: Is a social mobile ordering application that has been developed to provide an efficient and faster way of ordering products of a company via the wireless mobile phone without clients having to go physically to the providers centers to order for products or wait for salesmen and retailers to document their daily orders. M-order application is a solution for the SMEs companies in Kenya to facilitate an efficient supply chain value and integrate a paperless system.

With M-order the clients can place their orders on time via the mobile-web application or through their mobile phones after they register to use the application. M-order enhances efficiency, reduced customer complains; improve performance and productivity in the company.  Payment can be done via M-pesa to the providers. For more go to m-oreder website here

Next on stage were Michael Pedersen Plus (people) and Mikul Shah  of( Eat Out, Up and Concierge Kenya) talking about   Flix..

Flix- Movies and Cinema Guide in Kenya.  For the movie lovers Flix goal is to give you the most updated cinema database in Kenya.

Currently you can access the database through the following channels

• Mobile(web)

• Can be used on a regular browser

• Blackberry launcher

• Iphone “launcher”

• Bada applicaCon

• Facebook version

Get it in full here

Then finally:

Dealfish is a free online market place that has been established to provide safe and transparent transactions between buyers and sellers of goods and services throughout Kenya.

Points to note:

• Dealfish has around 300k visits per month making the site among the most visited sites in Kenya in a space of 6 months…

• 50 % of Dealfish’s traffic is through mobile phones. Talking of which, over 70% of those are through Nokia phones. Something for developers to think about..
• According @Moseskemibaro, they are not yet sure on how to monetize their products and services. …Raising many questions about Kenyan internet users!
• Transparency in pricing in Kenya is an issue. But it is assured bet that online Commerce will bring in transparency on pricing across the board in Kenya.

How to get your advertisement on dealfish.co.ke

1.      Go www.dealfish.co.ke through your mobile phone or pc

2.      Click post ad

3.      Follow the step by step instruction to post your ad or create an account

4.      Finally you will get a request to activate your ad. The notification is  via email or mobile phone 3325

And it is FREE

There was a time when I was very excited about the mobile number portability. Those were the days when most of us were slaves to Safaricom and then the salvation came in the name of Airtel. Since then the dynamics changed and now no much sike for  MNP.

I know many people in the industry expect the move to eliminate multiple SIM card holding but  I have a feeling it might not happen like that. In the long run probably yes.  At the moment the mobile network operators have problems due to dip in revenues following reduction in calling rates but the consumers are just fine.

The number one reason why most people would have wanted to port their numbers is the difference in calling rates.  The current calling/sms rates in the market by different network operators are almost uniform, and that means something else has to come to play.  May be the quality of services  by each network operator or the other value addition services like mobile money.

And talking about quality of services, almost all the mobile phone operators in Kenya are down…bure kabisa.  Safaricom  for example has been delivering smses after two days. Since the upgrade of their system almost a month ago, nothing has been working smoothly. Ranging from SMS delivery after two days including twitter sms to frequent MPesa experiencing delays to not being able to topup through MPesa.

Orange internet on the other hand is like a snail crawling on the park. The thing is damn slow. Seriously I thought we have fiber optic cables in this country connecting us to the internet super highway!  And they call it 3G+… smh.

Then there is the Airtel , with their never ending promise of launching 3G in the next Quarter.  It started with promise of launching the 3G network before the end of the year last year, and then they move to first quarter of 2011, now it is 2^nd quarter of 2011…jeez.   Let me ask one  stupid question like those of Kenyan tv stations , do you believe Kenya will achieve vision 2030 before Airtel launched their 3G network?  What a waste!

By the way the starting date for the mobile number portability in Kenya is 1st April 2011…put it in your diary. Thanks

They are the real force behind the growth of mobile money across Kenya.  Probably you are like me and you are wondering what really make them tick. Yes, I am talking about the mobile money agent business and I was happy when I came across the presentation by  Piet Biemans during AItec Conference Banking and Mobile Money COMESA.

Here  are the  nine drivers to the agent Business Case based on research in Brazil, Kenya and India according to CGAP:

•  Role-related

1. Up-front capital ‘acting as an agent can be a very capital-intensive business. CGAP’s research found M-PESA agents needed to acquire an average of US$ 1600 in capital in order to start operating as an agent.’

2. Liquidity management ‘liquidity management has two components: (1) accumulating adequate e-float and cash, and (2) the act of rebalancing the two’

3. Rigid staff and space expenses ‘a rigid cost “floor” that leaves the agent with much less flexibility on how many transactions are needed for the agent business to be attractive’

•  Exogenous

4. Security risk ‘robbery risk has two implications for agent costs. The amount of upfront capital an agent requires to begin operating can be increased by the cost of security improvements. But much more substantial is the expense from actually being robbed’

5. System reliability ‘losing a few days of business may be enough to make the month unprofitable’

6. Effect on other line of business ‘the bulk of agents will have a pre-existing business that continues to be important ‘

Time-specific

7. Adequate revenue at start-up ‘sufficient capital to fund losses until the cash flow turns positive’

8. Major costs with growth ’as the level of customer activity grows, agents will incur additional expenses like extra staff member and improved premises’ 

9. Fragmented demand across too many agents ‘the ratio of customers to agents is a key driver of agent network revenue, but the ratio can deteriorate even after it reaches an optimum point’

Join us on the 21st of March at the iHub for this month’s Mobile Monday. Our main speakers will be Dealfish. Dealfish is an online classifieds site,  users can post ads for jobs, sell stuff, rent, lease,hire etc  Moses Kemibaro, who is the Regional Manager (East Africa) for Dealfish.co.ke will be joining us to talk about their plans for the market as well as their presence on the mobile space.

Other presentations will be from:

1. Mocality -www.mocality.co.ke
2. Michael Pedersen-Flix.co.ke- mobile movie guide
3. Hilda Moraa- M-Order social mobile ordering application

As always a big thank you to the iHub team for making every MOMO meet up run smoothly and for providing us with the best space any techie community could ever ask, and to Virtual City for their support and sponsorship. MOMO-Kenya would not be where it is without these two supporters.

Date: Monday, 21st Mar. 2011
Open Hours: 18:00 – 20:00
Presentations: 18:00 – 19:30
Networking: 19:30 – Close
Venue: iHub, Ngong Road
Please Register in Advance

Sponsors

(Photos courtesy of Daudi Were)

On the 21st of February we had our MoMo meet up. To say the attendance was amazing would be an understatement, with over 40 students from JKUAT attending and a total attendance of 200 this was by far the largest MoMo meet up to date. Microsoft-EA came in strong with Vincent Mugambi, who described himself as the “Pastor Muiru” of Microsoft, in other words his an evangelist, a developer and platform evangelist to be precise. A few highlights from Vincent’s talk:

1. Microsoft has one of the largest cloud offerings in the market right now.
2. Mobile developers can leverage the cloud to build and deploy applications.
3. New features in Windows Mobile 7

Conrad Akunga of Virtual City joined Vincent to talk about the Imagine Cup. Conrad has been a judge for 3 years during the event when it was held in Kenya. He challenged developers to push the boundaries and come up with strong ideas and projects. “The era of the lone ranger is over..” was Conrad’s advice to developers, “work in teams..” was a message he emphasized. One thing he said caught my attention, “..don’t ever think your idea is completely unique..” most developers assume that their idea is very unique, in most cases someone else has thought of it before and probably tried to execute, the devil is in the details.

mLab (www.mlab.co.ke)

As part of the evening we had a quick introduction to the mLab team, led by John Kieti, a friend and colleague. John and I share common interests in technology and health, but I honestly have no idea why his twitter handle is @gmeltdown . The mLab, a mobile development incubator,will form a key component of spurring development in the mobile sector, a welcome addition for all those techies out there looking for a place to go from idea to product. The mLab is an initiative of InfoDev in collaboration with iHub, eMobilis. South Africa will also be launching an mLab over the next few weeks, I was very excited to learn that Steve Voosloo, formerly of the ShuttleWorth Foundation will be part of the team setting up the mLab.

Pivot25 (www.pivot25.co.ke)

Jay Bhalla also talked about Pivot25. Pivot25 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 win prize money for their Companies and Applications. Applications are due midnight (East-Africa time) March 31st, 2011. To enter the competition please view the rules and instructions. We advise you to be as detailed as possible and fill as much of the application criteria as possible.

ELMA

Kamal Budhabhatti, CEO-Craft Silicon took a few minutes to talk about ELMA. ELMA is a a mobile commerce platform that allows programmers to develop business applications rapidly. Developers can build robust applications fully integrated with a payment gateway. Definitely watch for Craft Silicon, they seem on the right path.

Kirui, a student from JKUAT wrote a more detailed blog posts recapping the event. check out http://kiruikenn.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/mobile-monday-with-microsoft-how-it-went-down/

This event was a success by any measure. We managed to impact students who will form the next generation of developers and entrepreneurs. Check out more photos here http://goo.gl/mjecn Look out for bigger and better things from the MOMOKE team.

One of the biggest challenges of starting and running a community event is building the right team, most people believe that building the community is the hardest but in most cases the passionate people always know how to come together for a common cause. Over the last 6 to 9 months I’ve spent a good amount of time trying to build the team that will take Mobile Monday-Kenya community to the next level, it’s not been easy and believe me finding the right people who are committed to something that has no monetary benefits is hard,  but as I mentioned earlier “passionate people always come together..”. So i’m very excited to announce the addition of Kennedy Kachwanya as part of our team, he joins the likes of James Muendo @mmuendo, Nelly Ndonye and I in working together to build the community. Kachwanya as he is popularly known on twitter is an avid blogger, tech enthusiast, developer and entrepreneur- have a look at Maduqa.com to see what I mean, he brings to the team insightful blog posts which will edify the community as a whole.

We at the Mobile Monday team are looking forward to working with Kachwanya, and getting all the support we need from the community.

A few weeks ago I got introduced to Next2.us. Next2.us brings geosocial technology and message match capability to simple low-end handset through text messaging. In other words SMS based social network.  It is not entirely new service in  Kenya as far as I can tell . I am yet to get time to compare it with Sembuse pioneered by @iddsalim and @mbuguanjihia or Mxit from South Africa but I think they are close.

SMS in its original form is highly  popular in Kenya and it seems the same  is still the case Worldwide. By that I mean SMS as the principal communications protocol between mobile phones. I might be wrong but I think that  there has never been a great new protocol to challenge the dominant position of SMS . According to a recent Deloitte study , which found that 90 percent of smartphone users send at least one text message per day.  While only 40 percent of smartphone users use social networks, including Twitter and Facebook, at least once per day.

I can remember the reactions of the Kenyan developers when Safaricom launched MXit.  MXit is purely mobile social network based on Instant Messaging service. You can use MXit to send text messages on your phone instead of the normal message sending tool.  At the time when it was launched , the local developers thought that Mxit with the help of Safaricom will box out all the local services in the market. Well that did not  happen like that  exactly, although it is still  early to tell.  But one thing is clear, no aggressive marketing on that front from Safaricom. Which is a big telling sign if you ask me.

Back to my experience with Next2.us. I liked the whole concept except the cost aspect. The cost of SMS in Kenya is Ksh.1.  At the time I did my testing bit, the rate of SMS through Next2.us was ksh.10 per sms but it is meant to drop to Ksh.5 once they have a dedicated short code for use in Kenya. Ksh.5 is too high although I understand where they are coming from. It is simply impossible to convince for example Safaricom subscribers to send SMS at 5 while they can use the same phone to send SMS at Ksh.1 or as low as 50 cents with Yu network. The only way  to do so is to make it more than just communication or connection.

Then there is Google free SMS with Gmail.  Not entirely free since you have to pay for internet itself in one way or another, but free anyway. In a day i get two or three SMSes on my phone sent through Gmail. With many Kenyans now having internet access at the comfort of their homes,  this might become very popular around here with time

Finally Twitter is also planning to launch SMS service in Kenya.  Jessica Verrilli Corporate Development & Strategic Initiatives at Twitter on an interview during her trip to Cameroon said that they are working with Safaricom to launch SMS service in Kenya soon.  The charges for that would be the same as that of the carriers they are working with. Considering all the above, Next2.us has a big mountain to climb and more so if their cost remain at ksh.5 per SMS.

The only way out at that rate is to try SMS Lottery

This is the best way to charge Kenyans more and they feel nothing about it. May be it is the love of free things or the love of getting things easily but the only time Kenyans are ready to spend more on things like SMS is when you promise them they will win something. Take for example the now banned infamous #6969, #2929, win millions competition.  You are charged around Ksh.60 to send one sms to those numbers and you are encouraged to send as many SMSes as possible. According to the insiders, doing so increases your chances of winning.  Yes, people do send such SMSes in big numbers..cash cow there.  By the way, I realized that you cannot ban this sms lottery business completely. Did you know that there is a new one called Kwachu Mamilli?  One funny thing about the SMS lottery show, they show people who have won but never show how randomly they actually picked the winners….

That a side, back again to Next2.us

To get started

Step 1.  Register your mobile phone number with the Next2.us service by sending a SMS message to your country short code.

The text message needs to start with your country keyword followed by the Next2 reg command (or use the word anza in Kenya) followed by the name you want for your Next2 account and your location.  Next2 will respond by sms text message confirming your account name and giving you a password that works at http://m.next2.us.

Step 2. Second, you need to know the Next2 user name of the person you want to text.  Then just create a new text message using your country keyword followed by 4 then user name followed your text message and send it to your country short code.  (like this Next2 4 brip message.)

That’s it.  You can now send text messages from simple low-end mobile phones between USA and Kenya.

A new book has just been launched, covering the growth and impacts of the Internet in India: NetChakra (http://netChakra.net). It is a compilation of 30+ essays by Internet pioneers, entrepreneurs and analysts in India covering key developments after commercial Internet access was launched in countries around the world in 1995. The book’s Web site has a novel feature: a chronology of Internet developments and launches in India, collectively compiled by the Internet community! India is one of the largest Internet markets in the world but also has a huge digital divide.This book covers a wide range of Internet business and digital inclusion issues, and the lessons and structure of the book can be picked up by practitioners in other countries as well.

About the Editors

Dr. Madanmohan Rao, Consultant/Author; BANGALORE
Founder, Indian Proverbs project http://twitter.com/IndianProverbs http://IndianProverbs.in
Co-founder, Bangalore KM Community (www.kcommunity.org)
Research Projects Director, Mobile Monday (www.mobilemonday.net)
Research Director, Indian Music Experience Museum http://bit.ly/gL8ZEc
Official blogger, BaliSpirit Festival 2010 http://bit.ly/ec8utW

Catch Madanmohan Rao on the following social platforms:

Tweets: http://twitter.com/MadanRao
Blogs: Mobile: http://mobile.techsparks.com/

Osama Manzar

Director, Digital Empowerment Foundation http://www.defindia.net
Founder, Manthan Awards (www.manthanaward.org) and mBillionth awards
(http://mbillionth.in)
Authored, “e-Content: Voices from the Ground”
(http://www.econtentworldwide.org)
Grand Jury Member, World Summit Awards(http://www.wsis-award.org)
Twitter: @OsamaManzar