I too was once a victim of online fraud having lost about 500 dollars trying to acquire an academic writing account or sometimes even falling for untrustworthy employers.
Hi Clarence, what’s your background and what has been your career?
Hi, I’m Clarence Lunalo and my background is in Controls and Instrumentation; my career has mostly been within the renewable energy sector (smart home solar systems). I have also built a number of Android apps over the years.
What were you working on and how did the idea come up?
The idea was an application to act as an arbitration platform for out of court conflict resolution targeting the digital economy and create a barrier to fraudsters who repeatedly rob users. The Android app was called Profile.
The idea came about after seeing repeated victims of online fraud especially those working remotely in areas such as academic writing and contracting services. I too was once a victim having lost about 500 dollars trying to acquire an academic writing account and sometimes even falling for untrustworthy employers.
Such fraudsters with the same digital identities unapologetically repeated this crime on other unsuspecting individuals. Those conned often had fewer options but to simply re-shout their names on social media often unaware that a month or two ago another a different person had posted a similar encounter with the same exact fraudster.
Had they known they wouldn’t have fallen victim, but even with social media they would not have been patient enough to search through hundreds of posts on the different platforms and filter out that complain history matched against that business partner.
How did you build the idea?
I started small, I had a very simple mobile app, very basic in nature that would allow collection of information/incidents from people who had been victims of fraud.
This included the victim signup after which they would post all the possible information identifying the fraudster from phone numbers, preferably M-pesa approved, emails and associated accounts, official/nick names, social media handles, id numbers, and identifying photos.
We would also document the incident, collecting all evidences including screenshots of chat messages, payment messages and conversations which would be stored to provide a database for reference.
A small listing fee would be paid as a means of filtering out jokers. If the fraudster had already been registered, they would immediately get a notification of their listing and have time to respond before the data would be made visible to other users and if they were honest enough and willing to resolve the matter, then we would provide arbitration/out of the court settlement as far as it was possible. A small fee would also be involved. Unlisted clients would be reached out to manually.
How did you get your first customers/users?
Through WhatsApp groups where most users were involved in online writing work. This was the easiest to start with as well as Facebook groups for online writing communities.
When did things start to go wrong?
Well things were yet to go wrong. However, it became clear that some individuals were relatively in more sophisticated syndicates of crime and had godfathers in high places as I started receiving some inquiries, warnings and advises from quite a number.
At the time I didn’t have the services of a lawyer, I also realized that counter-suits on defamation would be many and without official police incident reports, of which verification would require financing, it would be difficult to defend a platform I was still nursing.
With other official commitments and the need for constant online verification taking most of my time, the workload would be too much so the platform had to wait, I manually pulled it down.
What were the main causes for product’s failure?
·Underdeveloped Infrastructure – I did not envisage integrating the government adjudication to comply with the law of the land and automate approvals.
·The threat and cost of lawsuits with the introduction of the new data privacy bill and lack of dedicated lawyers.
·And as always initial financing to scale the app and have dedicated employees before the platform breaks even.
If you could start over, what would you do differently?
·Establish a dedicated company backed by a law firm that would receive and handle all cases instead of being sued at an individual capacity.
·Optimize the platform including AI to process the vast amounts of data.
·Have the right initial capital to match exponential growth observed on the app.
Do you have any advice to others starting businesses in Kenya?
·The best ideas are those that can attract traffic.
·The simplest ideas are mostly the best ideas.
·Every idea needs capital.
Are you working on anything new currently?
An app that can allow users to access IoT laundry machine services powered in shared apartment spaces.
Where can we go to learn more?
You can check out more on the new product at https://laundrybox.co.ke/
Startup Spotlight – Pickup Mtaani
Necessity is the mother of innovation (yes, you read that right). Problem solving first, tech second, no reinvention of wheels, simply using existing resources and methods to provide solutions to immediate and existing problems.
This has been Pickup Mtaani’s number 1, 2 and 3 rules in their playbook as they have tried to solve the logistics issue within the E-commerce and social commerce space in Kenya for the past few years now.
They have hit that sweet spot that most entrepreneurs hope to achieve, their business provides a solution for their customers more efficiently and at a lower cost while still making business sense.
How? By using agents, in the same way that M-pesa brought accessibility to cash closer to the customer using agents where people reside, Pickup Mtaani adopted a similar model, but for logistics. It is not a new model in E-commerce, they just found people who really needed this service and ensured it worked for them, and worked well.
The service is loved by both merchants (mainly those selling on social media) and customers alike, myself included. Just last week on Tuesday I used the service to deliver company swag to James Ahere (from last week’s article) to his door step.
I could write a lot about this company but for today check out their website 👉🏽 pickupmtaani.com as they keep making their services better every year. Watch out for their story next week.
Loved the article, share with your sister to share with her neighbor. Thank you for reading this far.
