Buy Wall

BuyWall seeks to empower customers to access quality but most affordable products in the market by helping them to identify the cheapest outlets in a geographical set-up. The application aligns manufactures or their authorized local distributors, with suppliers and customers on a singular platform. Using a universal catalog system, manufacturers will update their products descriptions and recommended wholesale and retail prices, out of which suppliers of the same products will build their prices based on their individual variables such as profit margins and other related product acquisition costs. Customers will then access supplier prices by inquiring from the system's AI about the cheapest source out of the listing suppliers. Our solution offers customers with market price information that enables them to undertake targeted purchase based on the cheapest price on offer, therefore it will be very useful for customer purchase decision making globally.

In Kenya, there is hardly no any digital market information as regards to product quality and pricing that can help customers/ consumers to make purchase decisions from the digital/mobile platform. The Kenyan marketplace can therefore be described as a jungle where consumer product pricing has got no correlation with the manufacturers offer prices, customers are therefore left to undertake door-to-door window-shopping in order to compare products as regards to quality and pricing. Since the Kenyan market place is so unstructured, it is very cumbersome for customers to access quality information regarding to the aforementioned variable, hence the gap that we intend to fill using our application. Kenya has an adult population of close to 30 million persons who do regular purchase of fast moving consumer goods, and who usually undertake physical window shopping because there is currently no online platform that enables window shopping. The greatest factor that contributes to this problem is the lack of information regarding manufacturer/authorized distributor prices that would guide suppliers on pricing as well as last mile customers on supplier price comparison. Our solution will therefore offer a disruption in the status quo by offering an alternative to the physical window shopping currently being practiced.

"BuyWall" is an online application that aligns manufacturers/authorized product local agents, with suppliers and last mile customers for purposes of product quality and price comparison. It provides last mile customers with an avenue for undertaking product window shopping at the comfort of their digital platforms.Using an inbuilt universal catalog system, these manufacturers/agents as well as product distributors update their product pricing as a way of advertising themselves to last mile customers who would then visit the platform to obtain the cheapest source of the same products that they desire to buy. The platform is like a central repository for both manufacturers/authorized local agents, product distributors as well as their last mile customers, where each party wants to obtain vital information from each other with the sole purpose of benefiting from best offers market place product offers. Our solution both supports desk top computer users as well as mobile smart phone users who are the majority in the sub Saharan region and Kenya in particular.

To get a glimps of our platform, imagine a street with say 500 shop stalls all selling the same product at varying prices. Buywall brings all these shops together in a platform that advertises to customers.

Our solution serves the entire product manufacturer-consumer value chain. By this we mean, the application serves manufactures/their authorized local agents with their distributors, together with the last mile customers of the products on offer. BuyWall enables manufacturers and their agents together with their corresponding distributors to list and advertise their products at their desired market pricing. The last mile customers would then obtain intelligent market prices information when they log onto the platform that has an artificial intelligent system that enables them to identify the cheapest shops offering their desired products in their relevant geographical localities.

We have undertaken intensive market research to identify the needs of each party that includes the manufactures/authorized agents, distributors as well as the last mile customers. Manufacturers and distributors would like a platform that would direct large but relevant traffic for product advertisement, whereas last mile product customers are interested in obtaining accurate information as regards to product quality as listed by manufacturers as well as related product pricing for purpose of purchase decision making.

Lack of an application to provide an alternative to the conventional physical window shopping makes the Kenyan marketplace so disorganized such that prices are charged by product distributors based on perception which is immoral. Our solution "Buy Wall" seeks to offer an alternative to the conventional window shopping by aligning both manufacturers/ authorized local agents with distributors and last mile customers in a complete value chain. This will eliminate inefficiencies that arise as a result of lack of perfect product information. Our solution targets the mass market that requires to window shop for quality but affordable products. 

WE have selected this stage of development because we have currently entered into a contract for app development with an Indian IT solution provider named Webmobril Technologies PVT Ltd of https://www.webmobril.com/, to help us bring the innovation to actualization based on all the information that we have provided them with. We envisage that the product will be up and running by December 2021 having agreed on a 130 working day delivery period.

Our solution is disruptive in nature. This is because we seek to provide a new dimension of undertaking window shopping by replacing manual/physical window shopping with an online window shopping app. By doing so, we will be removing the inefficiencies that are related with undertaking a physical window shopping such as getting tired, product price memory loss among many others, and replacing the same with a versatile system that brings all the market product information under one tab and at a click of a button. We expect that our solution will disrupt the market by providing a better alternative to the existing process. We also envisage that this application will be scaled easily across several geographical regions that experience similar challenges such as Kenya. 

We have already approached 5,000 potential customers with our solution, who have already endorsed the idea and have already accepted to partner with us once the product goes live in the next few months. We envisage that we will manage to hit 1,000,000 customers in one year and over 20 million in the next 5 years of operations.

We are at the app development stage therefore may not be able to provide measurable indicators at this juncture.

We have a team of 5 persons working full time on product development and market research from our end. We also have volunteers and interns who work part time in helping us to sensitize the market about the need to adopt our technology once live and working in few months.

The team lead is also the innovator and brains behind the disruptive business idea. He is a graduate in accountancy and business management. The team is also composed of an IT officer who is good in website designs and development. he is working with the offshore team working on the platform in India. https://www.webmobril.com/

We also have 3 call centre officers who get in touch with our potential clients in readiness for the planned launch in December 2021.

Our parent company i.e Attachment and Internship Placement Services (EA) Ltd attracts clients from a diverse background set up and also uses persons from various institutions to have some of its activities undertaken successfully. We believe in gender equity where we offer similiar and equal opportunities to all our staff irrespective of their gender, sexual orientation or religious believes.

We are applying for MIT Solve Challenge because we believe that our solution has what it takes to cause disruption in the entire product procurement value chain. In this regard, we are applying for the challenge to access vital resources such as mentorship, training, networking  as well as financial support to achieve our innovative dreams.

Being a new innovation and product, there are challenges that may come on board in the course of project implementation and this is where support from solve will come a long way in helping us reduce stress on project delivery timelines.

We are innovating in a new field that is yet to be fully discovered hence full of new potential challenges and experiences. We will therefore need a hand to help us surmount all these challenges with a good success rate.

We would be happy to partner with MIT Initiatives and solve members in our project delivery journey. Any other partnerships that may be forwarded to us from the MIT Solve team will be highly welcomed.

Our solution seeks to bring about inclusivity and equity among all sexes and therefore the Vodafone Americas Foundation support will help us achieve this goal better and more aggressively. Women in Africa are a disadvantaged lot despite the fact that they form the biggest number of purchasers across board. Our innovation is all intended at bringing equity to all without any marginalization. If successful in this prize, we will use proceeds of the prize to employ more women to work in our product delivery systems to ensure that we have gender equality is service delivery.

Our solution employs Artificial Intelligence in its systems to help customers make informed product purchase decisions by accessing accurate market product pricing information. We will use the AI for Humanity Prize to employ superior AI technology in our application for better service to our customers. Since our application is meant also to support research, Artificial Intelligence will come in handy in helping us achieve better product service delivery.