Varsity mobile phone magazine app developers win Sh1.7m
Safaricom announced that the award money would be disbursed in small amounts based on achievement of milestones agreed between the start-ups and the telco. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
David Mabiria, Fredrick Oginga and Dennis Shisia; all students of Egerton University are the overall winners in this year’s Safaricom Appwiz Challenge.
They developed a Magazine Reel to enable students access the latest campus news through their mobile phones.
Magazine Reel currently has over 250,000 page views monthly, and is set to be included in the Safaricom App Store.
Three developers of a mobile phone-based magazine application for university students are set to receive a Sh1.7 prize money from Safaricom.
David Mabiria, Fredrick Oginga and Dennis Shisia; all students of Egerton University are the overall winners in this year’s Safaricom Appwiz Challenge.
They developed a Magazine Reel to enable students access the latest campus news through their mobile phones.
The trio developed the news site application in order to provide credible and timely information, bridging the gap between administrators, student leaders and students.
Magazine Reel currently has over 250,000 page views monthly, and is set to be included in the Safaricom App Store.
The Safaricom AppWiz Challenge identifies developers with sustainable business ideas and develops them into early-stage mobile technology startups through incubation.
This year developers were required to create solutions that fall in any of the five categories, Mobile for Good and Community Development, Smart Business and Cloud Innovation, Financial Inclusion, Youth, Games and Media, Entertainment and Infrastructure and Utilities.
Safaricom will also give Sh1 million to developers of this year’s runners-up application, Guide Rig, which also emerged best in the Smart Business and Cloud Innovation category.
Tracy Mwangi, James Muindi and Timothy Wambua developed the communication and marketing solution that uses geo-location to enable customers find their way around to a particular location and within buildings.
Guide Rig also has a chat feature that allows users within a common location to share experiences or speak directly to management.
Other category winners were Ujirani, a community-based security application that topped the mobile-for-good and community development category while Smart Travel, a solution that helps motorists know whether they have exceeded their alcohol limit per sitting, won the infrastructure and utilities category.
Each of the category winners was awarded Sh200,000 for their solutions. The telco announced that the award money would be disbursed in small amounts based on achievement of milestones agreed between the start-ups and Safaricom.
Joseph Ogutu, the Director for Strategy and Innovation at Safaricom, challenged developers to take advantage of the 4G network in developing their solutions.
“This year we wanted developers to look at their solutions as businesses not just come up with mobile applications. We will continue to run the challenge to provide mentorship and encourage rapid product development ,” he said.
PAYE Tax Calculator
Note: The results are not exact but very close to the actual.
