Safaricom Appwiz challenge is here! Winning start-ups to get funding

The third edition of the Appwiz will run up to November 20. Safaricom director for Strategy and Innovation Joseph Ogutu said the competition aims to nurture and mentor ICT-driven start-ups focused on mobile technology. "The growth of the mobile technology market presents a great platform for technology start-ups to create innovative solutions to everyday needs and to transform them into sustainable businesses," he said.

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Appwiz, a partnership between Safaricom and Strathmore University, was introduced in 2013, and has since incubated close to 30 tech start-up solutions, including Safaricom M-Ledger and Magazine Reel, both of which are now commercially successful and sustainable businesses. The Appwiz programme takes participants through a three-months training curriculum tailored specifically for technology start-ups, offering mentorship and coaching from industry leaders and leading entrepreneurs and training in entrepreneurship skills.

"We identified a gap in the market, where one of the main challenges start-ups face is the lack of funds to transition from prototype to market-ready product. So we developed a competition and training module that covers all the basics these innovators need to build successful start-ups. We're asking them to participate in groups of three, so that we can help them appreciate the value of teamwork in a business as we nurture their start-ups," Ogutu said.

David Mabiria, the owner of Magazine Reel, came out the overall winner in the 2014 competition. Magazine Reel today has close to 200,000 active users and 1.5 million page views monthly. "Our main challenge as an up and coming start-up was getting started. I did not have the required capital and my management skills were lacking. The training we got as a team last year really opened our eyes to a lot of things we were doing wrong and provided the support we required to make our business successful," he said.

On the other hand, M-Ledger, a product of Dynamic Data Systems, was a runner-up in the 2013 competition. It later rebranded to Safaricom M-Ledger after it was acquired by Safaricom. The app currently has over 150,000 active users.

According to Ogutu, the top three innovative businesses and ideas this time will be selected from four categories that include customer engagement solutions, Safaricom product excellence solutions, mobile convenience and out of the box solutions. He said the grand winner will receive a cash grant of Ksh1.5 million, while the first and second runner-up will receive Ksh1 million and Ksh500,000 respectively.