Hewani.co.ke Apps for the whole family

Back in May 2010 I wrote a blog post “Why Zain/Bharti should launch an App Store“. It was my belief that creating a mobile app economy in Kenya could catalyse the growth of software for export in East Africa especially for young mobile developer like myself. At that time many of us (developers) were pushing Safaricom to open up the MPesa API or create an app store where we could upload our mobile applications and presumably directly access their huge subscriber base.

The problem was, though developers such as James Mwai of AroundMe were getting thousands upon thousands of downloads on app stores such as the Nokia Ovi store it was quite a challenge to monetize the applications and therefore there was no incentive for developers to publish applications.

Well a lot has changed a year later developers now have various methods of monetizing applications through platforms such as InMobi and Google Admob which provide local facilities for integrating Ads as well as integration with offline mobile payment solutions like PesaPay(@CrowdPesa).

Things got much better when Virtual City Ltd winners of last year 1 million dollar Nokia Challenge launched among many other things their Hewani Life App store www.Hewani.co.ke. During their live launch event at the Fox Theatres in Sarit Center C.E.O John Waibochi unleashed  the platform with a suite of 400 applications that will change the way we live.

This is a good move as its bound to localize this lucrative and untapped market and lower the barrier to entry for upcoming developers.

You can follow HewaniLife on @HewaniLife on Twitter.

Information is Power

Hey guys check out this story of Zack Matere a guy I met on Facebook who almost seems to have a new innovation up on his timeline whenever I look at it. Sooner rather than later this fella’s genius was bound to get noticed as this story has gone viral on youtube with almost a million views when I last checked. This goes to show that Kenyans continue to trail blaze with innovation and now according to his own words on skunkworks…

Hallo skunkers,

I have been invited to this event http://intersectionevent.com/ after a great response to the video i did with google.

this is an event for innovators and among the speakers are Ed Catmull
Co-founder of pixar, Marissa Mayer google V.P  and Steve Case founder
of A.O.L.

Randy haykin the convener of the event is an angel investor with a portfolio of 200 Million Dollars guys this is big and i have the opportunity to pitch for my leo network of noticeboards idea.to do so effectively i need a team to coach me and an orgarnisation to partner with in creating a serious presentation in January .
The leo noticeboard idea is simple but powerful because it enables immediate access to digital content for rural villagers without much input in capital.

You can hit up Zack on Google Plus as that is his only publicly available profile.

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The Internet has made the World a global village, that is digitally connected where information flows from one corner of the globe to the other in real time. However, unfortunately for Africa it accounts for only one percent of the World’s Internet activity. The good news is that this is changing fast, with the tremendous efforts by African Governments such as Kenya’s Vision 2030 plan, which has already led to the arrival of fibre optic connectivity to our shores in June 2010.

This new connectivity to the global Internet networks has resulted in an unprecedented explosion in broadband availability and development of local applications to service the digital needs of Kenyans. Unknown to many Kenyans, the popular and ubiqitous service known as M-Pesa sits on a “cloud” service based in Europe and is now connected to Kenya using fibre optic broadband cable that lands off the shores of Mombasa. This has allowed for the rapid expansion in mobile money use and applications.

As such, Kenya being a leading mobile technology innovation hub is the perfect place for us to launch our Internet Service Whive.com which aims to connect Africans by proving localized and contextualized communication and information applications.

Indeed Whive.com is a social media platform that offers SMS, Facebook, Twitter and Mobile Applications that are built specifically for local use within the Kenyan and African context. This has mainly been achieved by the integration of local languages and use case during development of these applications. In particular, Whive offers a variety of important services namely:

Group and Bulk SMS services
This services allows organizations to send short messages to grouped contacts using a bulk messaging system. We already have 600+ organizations using this service.

Social Advertising
We also have SMS, Text and Banner based advertising products for our 12,000+ individual subscribers on our web, mobile and native applications. Here sponsors advertise their products on each SMS sent through our network and these users send this SMS for free.

Importantly, Whive differs from other platforms because we are localizing our mobile applications to meet the needs of the diverse Kenyan and African communities. We have done this by making the application available in local vernacular, which include Swahili, Sheng, French and English. We will be rolling out our SMS application in other colloquial languages.

Whive is seeking to help the Kenyan youth with our Classifieds application. This application currently offers jobs and other essential information to this cohort that has been largely ignored for a long time within society. Recently Whive won the Vision 2030 ICT Award for the youth, gender and vulnerable groups sector. This achievement has emboldened us to do even more and as a result we plan to expand this service by developing a fully fledged Swahili social networking application to expand this service across our borders to the East African Community.

This new application will also form a basis of lingual translation services of key Kenyan languages for up to 10,000 Words. This will ensure that we continue to preserve our rich cultural heritage presently as envisioned in the New Constitutional Dispensation.

At Whive.com we believe that if we succeed in digitally connecting the youth to the opportunities the Internet has to offer we will as a country continue to benefit from the explosion of ideas and the utilization of talent that is plentiful in our country. In addition we will be able to meet the goals set in the Vision 2030 plan that aims to reduce illiteracy, poverty and bring our people to a middle income status by the year 2030.

Additionally Kenya will be recognized as a leading technology hub not only in Africa, but also across the world earning ourselves a prestigious leadership position that is rightfully ours.

In conclusion I would like to invite you all to join www.Whive.com where we are Connecting Africa.

John Karanja is the Founder and C.E.O of Whive.com.

This article was first featured on Business Daily on 10/06/2011 as part of the Vision 2030 Supplement.

Tech Community at iHub

Yes am back after six months hibernation from the wordy world of blogging and all things literal.

Nevertheless I will keep this post short and sweet

I will be speaking at 4 events in the month of June namely:

Vision 2030 Award Ceremony 9th June 2011

Whive was a recently a winner (Whive.com) of the Vision 2030  ICT Award for Youth, Gender and Vulnerable groups sector.  I will be making a presentation on our platform and how we are connecting the youth with more opportunities. [read more]

Pivot25 Mobile Innovation competition 14-15th June 2011

Whive.mobi is a finalist at this event with our mobile platform. Come and see how we are connecting Africa using this fast growing platform. [read more]

Afri Tech 2011 Nairobi 17 June 2011

At Afri Tech 2011, I will be conducting a seminar on the use of social media in Business using Whive.com as a case study. [read more]

Mobile Monday 20th June

Mobile Monday the premier event for all innovations mobile will have me as a guest speaker on how to monetize mobile applications.  Here I will focus on models that succesful applications have used to generate revenues  and how this is affecting our mobile development decisions at Whive. This event is sponsored by @NokiaEastAfrica [read more]

See you at these events and you can follow me at @KaranjaJohn and @Whive on Twitter.

Modelling Sanaa Recycled Knit Wear

Hi Folks, it is with great regret that i announce that this blog will hibernate as of January 2011.

This will allow me to transition to my new role as Managing Director at Whive.org.

It has been great writing for you for the past two years and i have met many awesome people and accessed great opportunities through this blog.

I will continue writing at Whive.org about the great products and services that you may find useful in your daily life.

Thanks again for your readership and do enjoy the festive season as you usher in the new year.

Who will wall their garden?

This has by no stretch of the imagination been an incredible week in the Kenyan Mobile Space. Why? It seems to have grown in leaps and bounds over the past 7 days. Earlier in the week i wrote about how Safaricom needed to focus its own mobile space initiatives around engaging Kenyan Application developers and coming up with a workable revenue model that would enhance the openness of its platform.

Well Safaricom did test run (its down now) its App store but with hundreds if not thousands of Apps presumably from other App markets. This obviously is better than nothing but adds nothing to sentiment that Safaricom is not interested in Kenyan owned mobile solutions …

This sad state of affairs was also exacerbated by reports in mainstream media that M-kesho was allegedly yet another case of stolen ideas.

In my opinion Safaricom’s Walled Garden approach may definately bring huge profits in the short run but for its ecosystem to flourish it needs to adopt more openness (Think Twitter).

I like what i see in Zain…

Earlier in the year i wrote why Bharti is best placed to launch an App store in Kenya largely because of the favourable sentiment emanating from Kenya Techies.

Indeed, rumour has  it that Zain is already working with established Kenyan Developers in the mobile space to guide the development of not only Kenya’s App space but the Sub-Saharan region as well.

More importantly Zain is being very proactive, it yesterday announced a partnership with IBM to roll out a $1.5 billion infrastructure to be based in Kenya which would support among many other things a Music(think iTunes) and App store (Thin Ovi).

This is very important because it means they are looking to scale application development in this region. A good backbone infrastructure means less costs in the future and rapid expansion of the ecosystem.

Zain can score if adopts a 70 developer : 30 Zain revenue split. In fact if it really wanted to control the Apprican market space it should open it up for free for say 2 years and let the best apps rise above the others by being voted up. This is what made M-Pesa such a huge success, it was near free for the first 3 years. Now they are making a killing considering it is now 10% of Safaricom’s yearly revenue.

Governance and Opportunity…

A BIG leap Pic: Courtesy Nation

IBM president Samuel Palmisano,  Bharti chairman Sunil Bharti , Bharti International CEO Manoj Kohli met with President Kibaki signaling a future Public/Private partnership that will not only open up Government through E-Government but also suggest that huge investments are on the way to the country. Presidents of Fortune 500′s don’t just drop by. President Kibaki notably was quick to acknowledge the presence of a lot of talent in the country (Read More).

The arrival of a more open government would mean more access to data. More access to Government data means more access to social problems. More access to problems means more access to needs. More access to needs means more access to opportunity and solutions.  For example back in 2003 Mpesa addressed the problem of having a large percentage of unbanked citizens who could not save and therefore could not invest. Kudos to safaricom for that.

The next range of mobile solutions will solve the problems of health, agriculture, voting and leisure. They are already here! Read about my idea how iphone 4g or equivalent phone could save lives if used by health sector.

Apps like Mkulima, iKatiba(our very own) are the forerunners of what is a fast expanding African ecosystem. This why you see the emergence of Kenyan owned mobile App stores like MobiSoko (by Juliana Rotich of the Ushahidi fame) and M-Labs led by Ken Mwenda.

iKatiba Application by Whive.org

To cap the crazy week, Nokia have just awarded Ken Waibochi (A.K.A. Murags) and Virtual city a venture fund of 1 million dollars for his B2B problem solver application that has already been deployed at East Africa Breweries Limited.

Nokia has also been funding and training other developers (including us) with impressive results. In this regard  Nokia and Kenya’s Telkom companies are more certainly set to do battle for hearts and minds of Kenyan Techies.

So now we say “Ndovu wawili wakipigana, Poacher hucheka hadi Benki “.

AppDate Yourself

I have in the past one year written 3 articles (Article 1, Article 2 & Article 3) arguing why Mobile Operators should have entered the App space a long time ago. This is essentially because Kenya has proved itself to be uniquely innovative in developing mobile applications/solutions that actually work and generate revenue.

So when Zain lowered its call rates to all Kenyan networks it opened the pandora box placing mobile applications and data at the center of competition in the Kenyan Mobile Space.

Join Andrea Bohnstedt and Nyagaka Ongeri in this very insightful dicussion about Mobile Application, Data and Revenue Generation.

I would only add that individuals and companies need to find a way to mesh Mobile Service (like SMS) and Web Applications to allow Content Creation that would ultimately create advertising space on the Kenyan Internet.

That is what we at Whive.com have done.

Have a look at our live applications which all are all partly SMS Based.

• Whive.com for Social Media and Content
• Whive.mobi for Micro Media and Mobilized Content
• facebook.whive.com our Facebook Integration
• iKatiba.com our Mobile App store.

Consensus has been that Safaricom has largely behaved like a big bully “stealing” ideas from Kenyan developers or behaving in a manner that is detrimental to the Kenyan Mobile ecosystem.

Whether the above claim is true or false momentum is clearly on Zain’s  side with almost everyones attention including Developers shifting towards  it.

It may be true that middle aged voice consumers may have in the past been the main revenue source but the shift towards data consumption by Kenya’s youth with drive profits in the future.

The Mobile Operator which convinces us to share revenue by giving them our Mobile Apps and sharing advertising revenues will win the war.

This is a HUGE opportunity for everyone especially if we let market forces run their own course…

iKatiba a Crowd Sourced Mobile App

Its been quite a while since i have written anything on Whive, but we have been busy working on a slew of applications all scheduled to be released on Alpha by the end of the year .

Our first and perhaps most important App is the iKatiba Mobile Application which we released on beta about 2 months ago. We currently have almost 800 users who have registered for it.  We are currently Crowd Sourcing its multi-lingual development and adding a few more features including Payments Gateway before we release it on Alpha later this year. iKatiba/Whive.mobi has also had a lot of local and international press for its use in civic education for the just concluded Referendum in Kenya. We will have a report on this soon.

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Our second application is our SMS Facebook Application facebook.whive.com which we have been beta testing in the first 2 weeks of August, we say many thanks to the 193 Users who have helped us iron out the bugs.  We are currently looking for sponsors to sponsor(click here) the application ahead of its showcase at Maker Faire Africa 2010.

FREE SMS http://facebook.Whive.com

Our third application has been in the brewing from 2008 when we acquired PostKenya.com complete with its 3300 users. In this regard we have also had to upgrade our servers to ensure we deliver an effective lite email service that will also be available on iKatiba and Whive.mobi. We are currently Beta testing the service at http://WhiveMAIL.com.

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Find Love Here

NiHuyu.com is the fourth Web App that we are about to fully release. This will eventually be a paid service that allows our members to source from the crowd suitable friends and that special mate. This product has actually been one of our oldest products as those who have been with us from the start will remember that Whive was at one time a Valentines gift service.

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PesaPay Payment Gateway Download

Our last Application is our Stand Alone payment gateway PesaPay which we will be fully crowd sourced and FREE to Download. We intend to give our platform away for free so that Kenyan Developers and SME’s can support epayments as well as mpayments without going through any third party. Whive will also be providing Market Data from our Whiver.com API to PesaPay users to enable them make sense of Kenyan markets.

The Whive Cloud is now averaging 1.2 million hits a month with a 20% increase in traffic each month. We would like to thank our team, members, fans and sponsors who are responsible for this modest progress.

Special thanks to incubators such as the *iHub_, Tandaa and naiLab who have so far provided an excellent forum  for our and other ideas to Crowd analyzed and tested. We have also opened our Micro Data Center dubbed ^bHive¬

Join me John Karanja at the Maendeleo Speaker Series at Nairobi Baptist on 25th August 2010 where i will be giving a speech on Social Media for Business.

Join the Whive Team at Maker Faire on 27th/28th at Nairobi University.

Keys to Business Success

Over the past 2 years SpaceKenya.com has gone from a business started in an Old Pentium 2 machine in a Cyber Cafe in the heart of Nairobi to a Medium sized outfit with an Office and a Data Center to serve our customers better.

3. ADVERTISE YOUR PRESENCE: Ok you now have the best Kenyan website but no Business is coming through