We started a series two weeks ago on the startups that launched at Garage48 event in Lagos. This series is not to castigate anyone but to challenge everyone to move towards building great businesses that we will all be proud of. It is high time we started having success stories from Nigeria. If you missed the first in the series, we would suggest you click here. It will give you more insight into what we are trying to achieve. We covered 4 of the Startups in the last series and we will try to complete it in this write-up.
Parkbench:
The company seeks to create a platform for you to meet other people and share your interests. You will be able to see the people that are near you and what their interests are. One key benefit of the service is that it will help you with real-life introduction. So, you just need to ride on this. The company wants to combine locations, people, and interests in mobile and web to deliver a great solution. The team members comprises 6 members.
Update on Startup: A visit to the project homepage only shows a parking page. There is no sign that the project will be launched soon. While this may be a great solution, it will forever remain a dream if nothing is done. The homepage also doesn’t contain any contact information. So, it is difficult to follow up with what the team is doing and their progress. We are looking for information on what this team is doing. So, if you have useful information on this project, please drop a comment below.
Lecture Wall
This is mean to be an educational networking site and on-line educational community. The company wants to create platform for lecturers and students to meet online. It aims to allow lecturers to sell their lecture materials. So, students will be able to get the materials and teachings of any particular course. The team comprises 7 members. The service is meant to be deployed both online and on mobile.
Update on the Startup: The company website is currently now available online. And a visit to their facebook page does not show any activity. In fact the last activity on the facebook page was at the weekend of Garage48 event. We think most Nigerian students will find the service useful and we really wish the company can launch this service. We still keep our fingers crossed and we will be on the look-out for the company.
City Explorer:
Have you always wished you could explore any city and identify local businesses easily? The City Explorer team seeks to develop application that will help you explore your city and promotes local businesses. City Explorer serves as local resources for consumers, local businesses and organisations. Users will be able to discover relevant products, services and places of interest. The service will be available both on mobile and web platform. The team comprises 6 members.
Update on Startups: The website states that service is currently available in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt but beyond this nothing is happening. The Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt pages show the same thing. So, this looks more like a landing page as against a working service. This is an example of a potential service that is still at Idea Stage.
Evrica Events
The company wants to create an event management system for Africa. Evrica is an online event management hub for africa and events around Africa. The company wants to help you to reduce time and expense required to manage events such as conferences, competitions, trade shows, training seminars, travel, press tours and customer briefings, and events publicity. The team comprises 7 members.
Update on the Startup: The website for the service is currently live and it can be accessed here. There are currently two main services listed on the website: event registration / listing and event ticketing. However, no event is listed and most of the links are not working. So, this is still work in progress. There is already a similar event service – Kilonshele – and we will like to see how Evrica events will differentiate itself in the market.
This is a platform to help you share your ideas and get feedback from other people. The company also seeks to create a platform you (startups, developers etc) to get other people interested in your project. In short, they want to help you Flip your ideas. The team comprises 7 members
Update on the Startup: Flippii launched in June 2011 and it can be accessed here. There are still 5 top rated ideas on Flippii since launch. We expected this to have increased but it seems only few people still know about the service. While this service is trying to solve a great problem (i.e. that of lack of collaboration between developers and potential business owners in Nigeria), the team has to really push this service. People need to know about this service. This is because most people work in isolation and will therefore find this service very useful.
Image Credit: Timbuktu
