Board of Innovation » Other-industries

How Egyptian startups take control of traffic via twitter

hayk — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 09:20:34 +0000

I’m pleased to welcome Hayk Hakobyan as our brand-new Ambassador in Cairo, Egypt! He explains how 2 Egyptian startups are building on twitter as a P2P traffic information system; long before twitter became an enabler in the country’s political revolution.

Cairo is the largest metropolitan center on the African continent, boasting a population of 20 million and counting. One of the salient “features” of Cairo is that it is a crowded city. A sprawling city intertwined with long bridges, tunnels and wide avenues; its streets are busy at all times of the day, and not only in the central part but in the outskirts as well. However, until a while ago there was no systematic way of getting updates about the traffic situation.

Since two years, usage of social media has been growing in the region and in Egypt in particular. Egypt became the biggest adopter in usage of Facebook and YouTube. On Twitter, Egyptians, in their regular Twitter updates, thought to fill the gap of absence of information about traffic. They created a Twitter hashtag #cairotraffic and started tweeting daily about accidents, traffic jams and bottlenecks in different parts of Cairo using their mobile phones or the Internet. The popularity of this hashtag took off shortly. Since then, anyone interested was able to follow the hashtag in order check which routes/streets to avoid or to report a traffic jam/bottleneck/accident.

With exponential growth of the number of Egyptian Twitter members using this hashtag, it became difficult to follow updates and status changes by just following the hashtag. Shortly afterwards, two startups grew around meeting the need of structuring tweets with this hashtag and offering a more user-friendly and pleasant experience.

Startups, Bey2ollak and Wasalny, offer a community-based service where one can share and learn about traffic situation in Cairo and Alexandria. Both companies allow reporting and checking via the Internet in addition to offering mobile applications for BlackBerry, Android, and iPhone. Both startups widely leverage social media, in particular Twitter and Facebook, to further enhance their offerings and engage those interested in their services. Bey2ollak offers a simpler interface, with reports of a traffic jam and ongoing comments of status changes. Wasalny, in addition to essential information about traffic jams and accidents, offers further information about estimated arrival times between two points and granular route traffic details, enabling possibility of checking exactly which parts of a specific route/street are jammed and which are empty. The latter is possible via Traffic Maps on certain streets. Lastly, Wasalny allows a possibility of choosing a desired direction for commuting and seeing the best option for arriving to a specific destination based on user comments and time estimates.

Both Bey2ollak and Wasalny operate in a so-called free business model mode, building a reliable platform for those interested in traffic status in Cairo and Alexandria, and perhaps ultimately offering either a set of premium services (for paid subscribers) or attracting advertisers (Bey2ollak is officially powered by Vodafone).

Manna Energy, a green for-profit business model

Nick — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:58:16 +0000

Delivering clean water to rural zones is something you typically associate with non-profit organisations. But Manna Energy shows that a for-profit organisation can bring even more value for all the stakeholders involved. Instead of delivering subsidised pumps and water treatment systems, Manna Energy sees its mission as a clean water service. Therefore they need to incorporate the maintenance of these pump within their own business system. Compared to other organisations, they don’t rely solely on the goodwill of local technicians to maintain these installations. Manna Energy tries to make profit and thus they are able to give these technicians a small income as well. To cover all the costs, Manna Energy trades Carbon Emission Rights on the international market. In order to trade as many credits as possible they even power these installations with green wind energy. A total win-win situation!

This article on SocialEarth.org brings a good lesson for many non-profit organisations. Nobody will doubt that the intentions of these organisations are very honourably. But since we are living in a world where cash is king even they should find ways to monetize their business. Most of the non-profit organisations rely on a vulnerable gift based model so exploring new and sustainable income streams is highly recommended. Finding ‘green’ ways to do this is even better of course.

Irehab.com: Let doctors pay to give you health care

Nick — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:06:30 +0000

The new start-up Irehab.com tries to take a different approach to health care. Patients can get free advice on how to treat specific complaints. By answering a few questions and looking at several 3D animations, these users should be able to diagnose themselves. To treat for instance ‘back pain’ they can follow step-by-step instruction videos made by physical therapists but personally selected by external doctors to fit the needs of that specific patient. The first 10 consults are free of charge, both for the patient and the doctor. On the platform itself, they will have a private area where they can keep track of the results. After the first 10 consults the doctors will have to pay $0.99 for each patient that they want to follow up in the future. For further advice the patient will have to pay a fixed nominal fee per month directly to the clinic or doctor. On average this fee will be around $9.99. The only money that Irehab.com” receives will be the $0.99 per month, so they will need a large database to make this Freemium concept profitable. Within a few years it will be common practice that people will diagnose and monitor themselves without the hassle of expensive expert consults. Many companies are looking for ways to monetize this evolution. Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault are only a few of the large group IT services that are around these days. But also beyond the normal web experience we see these experimental concepts. Recently Apple presented the Lifescan’s New Diabetes iPhone App that communicates with a seperate glucose monitoring device. The latter works similar as the VirtuaGym concept we presented earlier. There people could monitor their offline exercise habits to benchmark these with other peers online. This D.I.Y. health care market is nearly unexplored so you may expect a boom of new concepts and ideas in the coming year. Many of them will fail but some of them will change the way we look at health care forever.

Brick-and-mortar Stores Counter Webshops With Experience

Philippe — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:17:13 +0000

Especially in the current economic climate, brick-and-mortar retailers are losing ground (+2.5% in 2008) compared to webshops (+24% in 2008). Online shops can offer better prices and have the advantage of time convenience on their side. In addition, mobile and payment technologies are maturing, and more and more people get comfortable with e-commerce (both e-tailers like Amazon and online brokers like eBay).

Brick-and-mortar merchants like BCC try to counter by playing the card of Experience. The Dutch electronics retailer has just launched its new store format in Utrecht, Netherlands. The new store is completely built around creating a (trade fair) experience with elements ranging from drying laundry, a central kitchen with live demonstrations, ironing male models, to an interactive Green Wall. Eric Jansen of BCC is proud of the new store: “It should become a pleasant experience again to buy electronics”. On the other hand it is interesting to see that online merchants try to grow into experience as well by creating online shopping environments in which you can browse through books or walk through a 3D environment; or open brick-and-mortar stores as well. Trying to combine the best of both worlds – online and offline, MyGofer lets its customers browse and order products online, and pick them up outside or inside their brick-and-mortar stores.

We will see more of this blend of online and offline in times in which traditional stores need to react on their changing environment. Create unique shopping experiences, integrate with online interfaces, establish try-out stores, adopt free concepts…