From the Ventureburn.com blog:
30 African startups were profiled. Their selections were based on the startup coming from an African root and secondly, it been just brilliant.
From Transport apps: TaxiRank – South Africa
Down in Cape Town, Taxi Rank makes it easy for the city’s 4-million citizens to catch a cab. Simply enter your pick-up and drop-off destinations to compare estimated quotes from multiple cab companies. Once you select a quote, the cab company will send you a text message confirming the pick-up time and cost. Taxi Rank’s mobile site can automatically pinpoint your location if your phone supports browser based geo-location — no need to provide a pick-up point.
Why is it brilliant? The Taxi Rank design is intelligently simple and it works beautifully. It follows Google’s less is more approach to deliver a supremely useful service in uncluttered style.
From turning contacts into potential customers. Dropifi – Ghana
The team behind Dropifi are re-imagining one of the web’s oldest and most resolute elements, the “Contact us†form. The Dropifi solution consists of a website plug-in, optional QR code (for print-outs) and an analytic tool.
The plug-in simplifies and speeds up contact form implementation on company websites and presents an unobtrusive interface to customers. The novelty QR code can be printed out and is a fun way of directing users to a company’s online Dropifi contact form. The final part of the solution allows companies to extract intelligence from messages received through their Dropifi contact forms and makes responding to incoming messages easy.
Why is it brilliant? What was the last big innovation in “Contact us†forms? Autofill? Dropifi boldly pushes the age-old convention forward. It gives companies better organization of customer correspondence, while at the same time providing customer insight.
Companies can for example, gain insight into recurring issues through “trending topics†harvested from customer messages and how well (or badly) the company measures up to the industry query response average. For end-users filling in contact forms, the Dropifi experience is simple, quick and even fun.
To Online Movie Streaming – Iroko Partners (Nigeria)
One of the company’s most compelling new projects is called IrokoTV. Launched in December 2011, it allows its over 100 000 registered active users to view films from Nigeria’s film industry for free. Well, at least until June of this year, it’s not exactly clear what happens beyond that, but the company relies mainly on advertising revenue to support its business, having initially made a living through streaming full-length Nollywood movies on its YouTube channel.
Iroko Partners is the only company with the sole rights to distribute Nollywood movies online.
Why is it brilliant? The Nigerian film industry is the second largest in the world and IrokoTV provides a robust service for Nollywood film buffs across Africa and the world to get their fix.
To Real-time support to customers: NandiMobile – Ghana
One of Nandimobile’s products called Gripeline caught our attention. Using Gripeline, businesses in Ghana can deliver real-time support to their customers via SMS conversations. The solution also delivers tracking of incoming queries in unique chat windows assigning them intelligently to support agents, as well as contact management for bulk messaging, real-time surveys and analytic.
Why is it brilliant? Real-time SMS customer support can save business and their customers money. Also, since SMS is intermittent, customers don’t have to be glued to their phones while they wait for a call center agent to answer the phone.
Check out the rest of startups that made the list here – 30 Brilliant African Tech Startups
Related articles
- Ghanaian Tech Startup Wins Grand Prize In Global Competition (goodblacknews.org)
- 10 types of startup that had a breakthrough 2012 (thenextweb.com)
- Ghana Tech Company Takes Top Spot in International 2012 Startup Open (atlantablackstar.com)
