On Wednesday 5th of August, the Innovia teams pitched their 2nd trimester presentations and the Vangate Youth Cafe were extremely hospitable as they allowed us to host the session in their space. The teams were joined by guest entrepreneurs Marwaan Sasman and Roger Norton as well as RLabs developers, Kurt Appolis and Dean Van Niekerk.
Milestone 2 includes the minimum viable product (MVP) and the wire-frame to demonstrate the actual user journey.
Three of the Innovia teams presented their businesses on the day: Mtoto, Kaasi, and Zlto Wallet.
Simone presented the Mtoto app and Bitcoin website. She took us through the sections of the app which includes an admin system, curriculum (learn), connecting with parents, tracking student progress, games and monthly reports. The layout is meant to represent the 5 important factors for children, namely: emotional, social, cognitive, physical, and learning abilities and through Bitcoin, they were able to raise enough money fund 2 ECD centres on the Cape flats. The general feedback from the panel was that Mtoto needs to define the problem they are trying to solve more clearly.
Mishka presented the Zlto Wallet to the panel. RLabs is already well aware of the Zlto system as a way to provide youth with skills and resources to make them more employable. She explained the details of the app for the Zafes and the website for the merchants as well as what they want the site to look like in the future. They’re hoping that more merchants will sign up in future. General feedback was that the app sounds more like a voucher system than a virtual currency system. They also need to stick to one problem instead of trying to solve a number of problems.
Sinethemba and Andile presented Kaasi, the virtual employment app. They want to be able to bridge the gap between supply and demand. If a youth in the community has a skill they want them to share so people are able to hire them for their specific skills, then they could possibly use the Kaasi app. They are focusing on maintenance skills mainly. The general feedback included questions and ideas on how to screen the skilled youth before they are accepted on to the platform.
So far, the Innovians are doing a great job with regards to their prototypes, carefully using the constructive criticism to the best of their ability.
