CEO Roundtable bridging Asia

In this episode, I speak to Abisola Oladapo, Founder and CEO of Mumspring.

 

Mumspring provides baby and maternity products. Mumspring uses technology to enable antenatal, postnatal, and infant health. By newly launching the app "The Agnes App", Mumspring also provides every mother and child with Telemedicine with a mission to end preventable newborn death in Africa and minority communities around the world.

 

Abisola talks about: 

 

1) What Mumspring means to her

2) How she came up with an idea to start a business

3) Corporate life vs startup, a journey from Working at an international large co to founding Mumspring. 

4) What problems she is solving; providing every mother and child with Telemedicine with a mission to end preventable newborn death in Africa

5) Her experience of transforming employees into the culture of a startup and Mumspring.  

6) What is the biggest challenge in taking the business to the next level.

7) Her long term vision and goals with Mumspring

In this episode, I speak to Shereen Makhanye, Founder and CEO of Nubian Nature

Nubian Nature is a South African Black Female-run manufacturer of handcrafted Conscious, mindful hair, skin, and body care products. The products are created using ingredients from exotic African indigenous crops rich in beautifying nutrients. 

 

Shereen talks about: 

 

1) What Nubian and "clean beauty" means to her

2) How she came up with an idea to start a business; solve her own issues with hair care products in the market 

3) She wants to take advantage of rich bio-diversity of Africa for the natural and healthy ingredients of her products 

4) What she loves about her entrepreneurial journey.

5) She does not consider outsourcing manufacturing only for financial scalability to avoid the compromised quality of the mass production.

5) Her long term vision and goals with Nubian Nature

In this episode, I spoke to Dr. Choi, a Korean gentleman, volunteer, and philanthropist with Ph.D. in solar energy at The University of Arizona in Tucson who lives in Tanzania and has been teaching young people in Tanzanian rural areas how to make a solar lamp of appropriate technology for the last 10 years.

 Dr. Choi talked about 

Why he gave up his US passport to leave his family in the US and moved to Tanzania 10 years ago.

What is appropriate technology and why it is important to teach local people in rural areas how to make a solar lamp of appropriate technology? 

Difference between his Kuku solar lamp and Kuku solar phone charger and commercial solar lamp

Why the name of his solar lamp is KuKu and how he set the price of his solar lamp at the price of one chicken  (=the price of his solar lamp)

His family believes that his decision to give up a US passport and find an opportunity to help and serve people in Tanzanian rural areas with a solar lamp came as a calling from God. 

His plan to work together with KOICA to launch more systematic and large-scale projects to help people in Tanzania. 

His African dream to distribute to African rural areas more various solutions of appropriate technology

Today's guest is ABISAI NANDI, founder/CEO at Farmways Kenya ltd (Chicken Basket)

Chicken Basket is a social enterprise empowering women and youths through the chicken business.

Its unique value chain One-Stop-Shop model addresses the farmer’s needs by providing all products and services under one roof. We sell high-quality chicks (DOC: Day one Chicken) , feeds, and medication; offer training and capacity building on poultry management, and provide 24-hour veterinary extension services.

Once the chickens are mature, the Chicken basket buys them back from the farmer, processes and sells the meat and eggs in our butcheries and restaurants that specialize in various tasty chicken meals.

As a comprehensive poultry farmer’s solution provider, Chicken basket advocate for the commercialization of poultry to increase incomes and improve the livelihoods of farmers.

Today's guest is Mubarack Muyika,  founder and President at Zagace

Muyika was orphaned at the age of 10, thrived at school and turned down a scholarship to Harvard to become an entrepreneur. When he was 16, he founded Hypecentury Technologies, a web hosting company. He sold the company two years later to Wemps Telecoms in a six-figure deal. Muyika’s new venture, Zagace, which has raised funding from local investors, is a cloud enterprise software that helps companies manage inventory such as accounting, payroll, stock management, marketing and many more all bundled in a simple and easy to use format called Zag apps.

Founded in 2013, Zagace's mission is to empower small and medium-size businesses by making enterprise software basic and accessible to all. By use of Zagace ingenuity in custom-built proprietary software, permissioned blockchain and custom business intelligence and analytics tools, Zagace aims to make its business customers sustainable, scalable, manageable and adaptable to business process changes Zagace Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate founded in June 2015 by Mubarak Muyika. It is the parent company of Zagace Limited and several other companies trading under the name Zagace and related products. The Company is based in San Jose, California. It has an app store where businesses can access custom & proprietary built software as a service that enables businesses to manage accounting, human resources, finances, marketing, and other business functions bundled in a simple and easy-to-use format called Zag Apps. The Zag Apps are relayed as a cloud solution with a focus of small and medium-sized enterprises. Its core product Zagace Web Platform has continued to grow as an application store, digital distribution platform and development platform encompassing use of Hyper-ledger permissioned blockchain and use of AI tools for business data analytics, customer metrics, data search with thousands of customers drawn from over 30 countries. The company started out operations as Zagace Limited in 2013 in Nairobi, led by its founder Mubarak Muyika when he was 19, with proceeds from sale of a previous company, Hypecentury Technologies & Investments. The web app was launched in December 2014 and has since expanded its product offering across 4 continents

Today's guest is Erickson Mvezi, Founder & CEO at Tupuca, LDA

Erickson is a mechanical engineer with a master degree in social entrepreneurship with a specialization in Project management from Hult International Business School at San Francisco. My entrepreneurship journey started in 2015 in Hult where my desire to make a positive difference in Angola was coupled with different business cases and people from various backgrounds. Ever since, he started seeing every problem as an untapped opportunity to make a difference. Between Luanda and San Francisco, Tupuca was born.

Tupuca is a food delivery service that enables its users to order food through an interactive mobile application that connects its user to multiple restaurants with dozens of food choices and to share a meal with a nonprofit through donating.

The Tupuca app offers a seamless, easy-to-navigate interface that makes ordering food a simple, fast process. To get started, users download the Tupuca app and find the food they want. Then, users order their food and can choose to pick it up or have their meal delivered. Payment is made upon delivery. Tupuca has forged relationships with some of the area’s best restaurants and is excited to bring these on-site for users of the app. Tupuca is available for Android and iOS. More information can be found at tupuca.com

Today's guest is Zulé Vuuren, founder and Chief Energy Officer of LocumBase.com

LocumBase connects freelance medical professionals with medical practices ensuring continuous quality care when and where needed most.

A frictionless online solution that secures the right medical locum when needed most. Creating a supportive ecosystem for freelance medical practitioners and the practices and hospitals that make use of their valued services. - Founders Factory Africa Start-up Accelerator Alumni - 2020 Grindstone Accelerator program participant

Today's guest is Elohor Thomas, CEO and Cofounder at Codeln.com

Codeln is an end-to-end Technical Recruitment platform. CodeLNn offer the best approach to recruiting Software Developers by automating the entire process thereby cutting down technical recruitment time by 70%. CodeLNn understands that the process of recruiting Software Developers is a hectic and time-consuming process and if not properly conducted, the Company risks having a bad hire. Finding and identifying skilled talents is quite a process and employing a wrong fit slows down the technical productivity rate.  CodeLNn thereby makes recruiting Software Developers a fast and easy process for Companies.

Key services:

Talent Sourcing: we help Companies find skilled Software Developers through our Online Marketplace of pre-vetted Software Developers.

To ensure quality, CodeLn verify the coding skills of all candidates before we place them on our Platform by testing them using a project-based approach. CodeLn also source from Certified Tech Training Institutions. Screening: validating the skills of potential employees cannot be overemphasized.

Using our Testing Platform, CodeLn help verify the coding skills of Software Developers by giving them projects (workplace sample tests) to build on our online Integrated Development Environment (IDE). We check for code quality (vulnerability, maintainability etc) based on standards and best practices.

Today's guest is Ignatus Rogers Lema, founder and CEO of Rogathe Dairy Farm Products in Tanzania

Ignatus graduated from National University of Singapore. He mentioned that based on what he learned in Asia, he is transforming the organizational culture of Rogathe into an Asian style of storng Work ethic based on the ideals of discipline and hard work to quickly scale his business and to become the #1 dairy company in East Africa someday. 

 

Rogathe Dairy Farm Products processes and distributes 3,500 liters of raw milk daily (up from 350 liters thanks to the investment from the Fledge accelerator), collected directly from smallholder dairy farmers, fortified with vitamins and minerals, and supplied to the most vulnerable groups affected with malnutrition diseases: children in school and patients in hospitals.

We collect raw milk from 30 smallholder livestock farmers outskirts Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

We process the raw milk into quality, organic, fortified dairy milk then supply in bulk quantity to customers.

We ensure that small-scale farmers get a reliable market for their raw milk produced while we also provide them with extension services which include veterinary care for their livestock.

We train all our smallholder farmers on sustainable animal keeping while adhering to animal welfare

 

Ragathe says "Our primary customers are schools and hospitals, plus some bakeries and restaurants.  Combined those customers serve more than five million individuals every day.  By 2022 we expect to increase our supply to over 10 million consumers daily across Dar es Salaam and the coastal region of Tanzania."

Today's guest is Karanvir Singh, founder and CEO of Yego Innovision also known as Yegomoto and Yego Global.

Prior to launching Yegomoto in Africa, Karanvir was engaged in Counter-Terrorism and Homeland Security solutions and keynote speaker on communication technology and security in India. 

"Yegomoto" - a revolutionary platform for Motorcycle Taxis in Africa that provides metered rides, cashless payments, creates jobs, and grows small businesses.

Yego is a technology company that has designed a Just launched "Yegomoto" - a revolutionary platform for Motorcycle Taxis in Africa that provides metered rides, cashless payments, creates jobs and grows small businesses to make transportation services in Africa efficient, safe and secure. Though taxis are a major avenue of youth employment, the prospects for drivers are uncertain and inadequate. Yego aims to redeem the work of drivers by bringing transparency, accountability, and fairness to an informal industry.