AkiraChix win Kes. 1 Million in IPO48 with M-Farm.
AkiraChix, the all girl team of Application Developers won Kes. 1 Million in the inaugural IPO48 competition last night with their M-Farm concept. M-Farm is a mobile-based marketplace that creates transparency for agricultural produce so that farmers and brokers can achieve better prices for their produce. What was even more impressive in their presentation last night at IPO48 was that they already had a short-code to which one could send an SMS to get the latest Maize prices for a specific market in Kenya. M-Farm also won since its business model was well thought out and they even had a crowd sourcing approach for securing current pricing for agricultural produce.
Overall, IPO48 was a highly competitive and successful event with many great software applications and business concepts coming to the fore. Its amazing how much creativity and ingenuity was presented there and I found myself thinking more like a venture capitalist, rather than observer. One thing however is for sure – many of the ideas that did not win will still find suitors and in fact it was announced that one already had an Angel Investor in place. So, who knows, IPO48 could become one of those events that acts a launchpad for early stage Kenyan ICT start ups to find funding and a business model that works! To AkiraChix, congratulations! For a full breakdown of the results, visit this post at Afrinnovator.com who also covered IPO48 in detail
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9 Comments
Congratulations! May this be a launch-pad to a lot of innovative ideas that will make the world a better place! Good Job!
Congratulations akirachix, This is going to be a motivation for more ladies to enter into the tech world.
Perhaps we should be glad that more capital is finding its way into
local IT innovation – From Apps4Africa to Tandaa to IPO48 to Worldbank data app contest etc. For the Chix thats great – I always thought affirmative action is demeaning for the fairer sex and when they win in a competitive process its really progressive.
It should be interesting to see how all these projects will translate into sound businesses contributing to our knowledge-baed economy in the next 3 years
.-= gmeltdown´s last blog ..Along Came Standards and Guidelines for EMR Systems in Kenya =-.
Congratulations to AkiraChix. This is a true showing that there is high potential and innovation strength amongst Kenyans. Though the concept is not new & currently in use successfully in Tanzania the AkiraChix girls have still shown creativity and ingenuity. With the innovative conceptualision of ideas to prototypes shows there should be heavy investment towards the ICT sector and the up and coming New Age industries
.-= Ephraim Muchemi´s last blog ..New Media for the Kenyan Journalist =-.
The event was really critical for all the ideas.
I salute the gals, they did a great job and they should keep it up!
Its about time …..
well done ladies.
Yeah! Impressive indeed, congrats to the Techies.
Really good work AkiraChix, just but a beginning….