Over the years safaricom
has been the leading service provider for a couple of products, including and
not limited to mpesa, mshwari, voice and sms services.
They have a big market
share at home and speeding to all over the world. This has led to mass
profits which they calculate in billions
Spark venture
Officially launched in
November 2014 this was a project that aimed to help local startups get up on
their feet and hit the ground running.
The project specifically
was aimed to assist tech start up that use mobile technology as an
enabler.
It support the
successful development and growth of high potential mobile tech start-ups in
Kenya through a combination of investment, business development support and
technical assistance leveraging on Safaricom’s unique capabilities, assets and
market positioning.
$1 Million was set aside
to assist the growth of this startups and could be used as minority equity or
convertible dept with each innovator banking between ksh 6-22 million
Who’s eligible?
Apparently you cannot
just wake up run to safaricom and bubble your idea. Even you will not pass
security. By default your innovation must be based on the mobile technology and
fits in the following categories:
- Mobile commerce/Payments
- Youth, Media Content and Infotainment
- SME and Cloud solutions
- Data and Messaging
Applicants must as well
fulfill the following requirements:
- Kenyan presence/citizenship
- A Core diverse skilled team
- Refined Working mobile based product/service
- Commercially viable business model
- Active user base
- Desirable
- Generating revenue
in a nutshell.
This is a really good
project as it aims to grow our industry and put food in people’s tables.
A couple of startup have
greatly benefited from this initiative.
They include:
- Eneza
- FarmDrive
- Musoni
Am sure there are many
more out in the market and this project is still in course. (Their website has
no updates on its progress).