KEKI – A Platform which Main Purpose is to Connect Small Towns with their Local Government and their Local Commerce
KEKI is a tool designed to connect local communities in 2 main areas: government institutions and local commerce. We are working on building a safe, reliable and trusted platform for small communities across the country.
- Vision and value proposition: Safe, reliable and trusted information to connect communities.
- The problem: Local municipalities are still too far behind in their digital transformation journey.
- There is a significant opportunity to centralize local governments’ communication channels (emergency services and general information). Current channels are not available via mobile applications but rather websites.
- Whatsapp and Facebook are the main sources of information; however, these are reliable and usually missed by users.
- Cash drives more than 70% of total transactions in these locations.
- Businesses have very limited customer reach due to their current channels.
- Delivery services are limited to each merchant.
- There is a lack of understanding of how businesses behave in these markets. According to the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), almost 50% of businesses are not formalized/registered.
- Online transactions are not carried out due to trust and complexity.
- Target market and opportunity: the ideal users are local merchants, local institutions, and the community that lives in these small municipalities. We are aiming to begin in a mid-size town called Libano. This magical place is located in Colombia, South America. We have chosen this location because of our connection with local governments, understanding of the local culture, and interest in building a safe, trusted, and reliable platform. The market size is about 50 government institutions, 4K merchants, and 500K users.
- The solution:
- Institutions: will be able to provide centralized information to their community replacing radio and their “Facebook page”
- Merchants:
- Will be able to sell their products through our app
- Will be able to offer their services and receive certificates to create more trust to the end-user
- Will be able to connect with delivery persons and provide a more complete solution. We will provide the platform for this connection.
- Users: Will be able to find all required local information on one single location site. Government, events, merchants, delivery, services, payment services.
- Team: Our team is composed of 6 co-founders
- People Leader – This person is the common denominator among all resources, and has put the team together. Originally from Libano.
- System Engineer who is managing the development of the application and system architecture. Located in Colombia’s capital city, but originally from Libano.
- Marketer; born and raised in Libano. Local resource connected with local authorities and who understands and knows the market and the community culture very well.
- Lawyer: local resource and co-founder who manages contracts and makes sure the organization is aligned with Colombian legislation.
- Financial expert with significant knowledge and experience in managing organizations and their finances
- Strategist: HBAP student with experience in AGILE, Analytics and Business Translation whose main idea is to help the organization build a long-term strategy that is socially responsible and financially sustainable.
- Competition:
- Institutional: Information is not digitalized. There is a lot of dependency on radio and less effective alternatives.
- Users/Comercial e-commerce: Existent solutions are centralized in the big cities, and there is no trust in merchants
- Delivery services: current orders are done via phone, text messages. Some users/merchants have started to use WhatsApp but in very early stages.
- Images and Visuals: These are the snapshots of the current MVP (work in progress)