Radar folks, which market segment do you think solutions to problems should be targeted to.
The most fertile part of the soil is the desire of everyone. However, the less fertile also produce good fruits. See one of the ideas for the middle class from this link Taxi Hailing app for the Middle Class
I actually wrote a blog post on this last week - See below. My prediction is not rocket science but there’s great untapped value in providing for lower class. And there’s even greater value in the middle class that’s not not tech savvy, well educated etc, which is what most startups currently target.
I will go out on a limb and predict publicly that in the next 10 years, the ‘Tech Titans’ (permit me to use those words) in Africa, will mainly all provide products/services to the lower class.
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Thanks, I actually read your article some days ago. Do you think the reason the lower class isn’t targeted is a combination of culture (fear of technology) and money? Or is an unwillingness to pay for services the key problem.
I think there are loads of factors at play but the one that’s strikes as the most important is that startups are totally blind to the lower class. It’s not just ‘sexy’ or ‘exciting’ to build for these folks
On the other hand, using Radar as a yardstick, how many apps do we pay for which is for leisure or business, but made by Nigerians? I actually this will be a good one to survey and get results but something tells me it will be at very low percentile. And yet, we’re the ‘tech savvy, educated, literate ones’.
So once startups start realising that this is where the pot of gold lies, then more innovation will start coming out from the woodwork.
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Good point. I go on reddit sometimes especially the android subreddit and the support those guys have for developers is crazy. Thinking about it most apps cost under 500 naira, so I still don’t know why we don’t support them. Data, power, infrastructure deficits maybe?
I also have this theory that our marketing is not top notch yet. I feel there’s more to the product than developing it. Few Nigerian ads have sold products to me, Honeywell, cowbell and indomie.
Marketing is definitely a great part of it! For startups, people love too much secrecy under the misguided misconception, that ‘people will steal my ideas’. Ordinarily this week, at least 2 instances people have advised on Radar, ‘go stealth’.
The reality is that when we release a product - web based or app, nobody cares. And rightly so, because the product is new. And the time, we should be honing our messages of what the product should do, we’ve been in stea
Every time, I hear ‘stealth’ - I think of Dharmesh Shah’s quote “Stealth mode is for fighter jets, not startups.”
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There are no middle class or the poor class… just people who aren’t aware of some things and whose knowledge are limited to what they know…
The same applies to tech, there’s always a free product with ads and a paid product with more features… this means, its foolishness to create a paid product without users and without giving at least a free trial of the product.
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Initially i thought about keeping my idea secret unil its ready then i realized i mite just be working in ignorance and naivety if i don’t talk about it. Im not scared of my idea being stolen because if it is stolen it will provide for me the necessary challenge to create something better than my imagination originally conceived. My idea was born of the need to carter specifically to the middle class.
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I hope the go stealth mode is not the one I mentioned for the social media guy?
Going stealth is not hiding your product o,
It means relegating all the fanfare of " I am CEO" and all the I have arrived press briefing that Nigerian founders do.
Going stealth is building and growing your product in discipline and not being distracted by the need for the spotlight…NEVER about your ideas being stolen or copied.
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Good man…good clarification!
How do you do free trials for an ecommerce store?
But you can start an ecommerce store where the lower class can interact with inventory flyers, given out weekly at major bus-stops, with flexible buy options like X-months installmental pay; after 80% pay is achieved goods get shipped.
This is targeting the lower classes.
I have a friend/partner successfully running an ecommerce gig like this.
So to reply your claim there isn’t a middle or ‘poor’ class, sorry to disappoint you, there definitely is.
We have a lot of work to do. People think marketing is about ads.
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I have this theory, whatever you are selling should either be targeted to the poor or the rich, the middle class will sway any way.
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The question should not be which class you are selling to. The question should be do you have a market.
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Okay let me take a shoot at this.
Been nursing this idea of a service that will enable people book a KEKE NAPPEP ride using USSD technology.
The Idea
In various cities across the country, people stay late nights, they live in estates/areas far from main transit roads where they can find a vehicle to commute them to their various destinations. The hypocritical service would gather the data of KEKE riders across a city including the various routes they often ply. Then customers would call/text a certain short code and get linked to the keke rider that ply his/her route.
Implementation
I know services like Twilo and infobeep offer a very seamless way of interfacing the web and mobile phone services. A services can be built using Twilo or infobeep APIs to implement call/SMS routing to a desired destination. Ride requests can be directed to a riders that ply the route described in the request.
Challenges
- Security of both riders and commuters.
- suitable revenue model
- how to figure out if a rider is available.
NB* these stuffs are far from perfect. It’s just a rough idea.
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In as much as we know how we can leverage the internet to solve many problem, the bulk of the problem is offline…
Offline logistics is where the live or die happens, and if your business model is just TOTALLY sustainable online, then ITS equivalent is probably already supplied by Silicon Valley…
…
Well I don’t know what to call USSD but its definitely not internet at least not from the end user pespective.
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The idea has merit however if you are gonna use ussd it should be like a bbs in the old days as a sort of directory. You pick a location it lists Keke riders even taxi cab drivers with their phone number. You either do a charge on the lookup or you charge the vendor. You would have to do a lot of legwork though. Keke riders change year to year.
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Well in every city, keke riders have a union so it makes it easy to get there info and store it in a db. Get ride requests from commuters via USSD where users will text their destination details and location. Route the request to available rider. The idea is quite buggy tho 
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