Gmart.ng

Over 10 million tech-literate Nigerians including university students and graduates rely on a skill or trade to earn a living. This has led to an abundance of (informal) small scale businesses yearning for publicity and growth. 

Gmart.ng aims to provide a virtual market where these businesses can overcome the overwhelming cost of marketing and shop rent allowing anyone with marketable skills become an entrepreneur and advertise to a large audience of prospective clients for next to nothing.

If scaled globally, this platform would enable small and medium-sized enterprises to reach a wide audience as soon as they start business.

Gmart.ng solves the problem of raising capital to start small businesses involving the sale of items or provision of services by eliminating the cost of marketing and shop rent. 

In one way or the other most Nigerians (including college students and graduates)  are entrepreneurs. Their businesses like most others are always in need of clients to thrive. The current means of marketing such as physical flyers and social media posts are either expensive or simply annoying to the uninterested. The COVID19 pandemic has pushed even more Nigerians into entrepreneurship by causing many to loose their jobs at the same time rendering the current means of marketing ineffective due to the lockdown measures imposed on markets and even streets. 

An affordable and easily accessible platform (mobile application) to enable these businesses reach their clients has never been more important. 

Gmart.ng is essentially a database of skilled workers and items for sale accessible to anyone in need of its information via a mobile application. The mobile application allows business owners to have their goods and services published on the database allowing other users in need of those services to get in touch from an auto-updated list of proffessionals or whenever they run a search query. 

Those in need of the services of a nearby plumber, electrician or carpenter would come to see Gmart.ng as the go-to for such contacts. The platform also implements a cognitive search (artificial intelligence) feature to enable clients find the right professionals by searching for not just typed keywords but also synonyms of that keyword ensuring that every business subscribing to the platform gets optimum publicity. 

Gmart.ng offers a solution to over 10 million Nigerians who rely on a skill or trade to earn a living. Gmart.ng would give them an effective platform to advertise themselves to those in need of their goods or services.

Our solution also serves the over 20 million tech literate Nigerians who may require the services of those professionals enabling the clients connect with the business as soon as the client requires their services. 

For many small and new business owners, owning a shop and advertising to a large audience are major obstacles due to the overwhelming capital required to cater for such expenses. This is especially true for low income skilled workers such as electricians, plumbers, painters and student entrepreneurs and is often the case in Nigeria. 

Gmart.ng offers an affordable, modern, convenient and easily accessible network of buyers and sellers incorporating artificial intelligence to ensure that the goods and services of all businesses receive optimum publicity. 

Gmart.ng is innovative because no other company offers the combination of services that we do. Essentially, our services are:

(1)Connect service providers to those in need of their services. Currently,other companies such as Stutern, Hired, UpWork and even LinkedIn connect skilled workers to clients and employers (in Nigeria) but only for white collar jobs such as programming and graphics design. No attention is currently paid to the tailors, painters or plumbers whose services are always in demand. No platform exists to connect the over 10 million blue collar entrepreneurs to their employers. Gmart.ng provides just that and incorporates artificial intelligence to ensure that every business subscribing to the platform advertises to anyone who is even remotely interested in their service. The use of artificial intelligence (semantic search  AI) also ensures that the illiteracy or logophilia of either clients or businessmen  does not prevent them from getting into contact with themselves as not just search phrases but synonyms of search phrases would be used to find relevant professionals for a client. 

(2) Broker transactions between buyers and sellers. Entrepreneurs who sell items would be able to advertise their items on the platform and have buyers pay for these items on the platform. The sellers would only be able to collect the payment when the buyer has confirmed receipt. This fosters the trust of both the buyers and sellers in the platform. No other company in Nigeria offers this specific service. 

Gmart.ng is essentially a database of goods and services stored on firebase servers and accessible to anyone in need of the information via a mobile (android)  application. 

Browsing the database has been optimized using semantic search (artificial intelligence) models hosted on Microsoft azure servers because the key words or phrases used to search for a professional may not be used by the target professional in writing his or her profile. Thus, using the Gmart.ng mobile application, a person may search for a "tailor"(key word)  and find a "fashion designer" in the search results which is a win as both professionals  essentially offer the same service. 

Our mobile application also implements image search when users intend to find items they want to buy. The image is also sent to an image analysis (artificial intelligence)  model hosted on azure servers to generate descriptive tags for the image. These tags serve as key words to search through the Gmart.ng database for related items.

Popular search engines such as google and bing are fitted with semantic search models such that when a key word or phrase is typed into the search field, the results returned do not just contain the searched keywords but also synonyms of that keyword. Microsoft has made the semantic search model powering bing available to developers on the azure platform with detailed documentation for developers to implement here. Gmart.ng incorporates the cognitive search service offered by Microsoft azure to effectively connect businesses to clients. 

Image search is also being implemented by popular search engines such as google and bing and even international online stores such as aliexpress. Microsoft also makes analysis of images easy with its cloud hosted image analysis (artificial intelligence) model. The documentation to implementing this model is also available to developers in this link.

The National Bureau of Statistics (Nigeria) estimates that over 10million Nigerians including university students and graduates rely on a skill or trade to earn a living. A number that has grown exponentially since the outbreak of the COVID19 pandemic. These businesses require a platform to advertise their goods and services as most other (expensive and ineffective) means of marketing have been seriously hampered due to the lock down measures implemented to combat the COVID19 pandemic. 

An easily accessible network of skilled workers and items for sale has never been more needed by struggling entrepreneurs and those in need of their services. 

A mobile application that can transform people's skills into businesses and allow users to market their goods without worry of the overwhelming cost of shop rent would be jumped at by most of these entrepreneurs. 

Gmart.ng is currently a prototype in development and is currently being tested among student entrepreneurs.

In the coming year, we expect to serve 10,000 entrepreneurs and publicize their services to at least 50,000 users. 

However, 5 years after launch, we hope to serve over 20% of the 10 million nigerian entrepreneurs (at least 2 million people) who require a convenient way to advertise their goods and services. 

For the next year, we have 3 major goals which are:

1) Launch fully functional android application to the app store. 

2) Attain a minimum of 10,000 monthly subscriptions.

3) Generate a minimum revenue of 3000 USD per month.

In 5 years, there are 4 major goals we hope to achieve which are:

1) Attain a minimum of 1 million followers on our social media handles.   

2) Start regular promos where selected businesses get publicity also on social media.

3) Attain a minimum of 500,000 monthly subscriptions.

4) Generate at least 100,000 USD per month. 

The major barrier hindering us from achieving our goals is low finance. 

Developing an application such as Gmart.ng in Nigeria comes with an unavoidable pack of challenges including unstable electricity, high cost of internet data and expensive computing resources. All of which can be eliminated with sufficient funding. With enough funding, alternative source of electricity (solar pack or an electric generator) can be procured for the development team as well as proper computing resources and sufficient internet data.

Sufficient funding is essentially all that is needed to overcome the current standing barriers. 

We plan to overcome our financial challenges by applying for grants and sponsorship programmes. 

We have already applied to the UNICEF COVID19 challenge (Gmart.ng COVID19 challenge) and we continue to seek sponsorship from programmes committed to helping tech solutions positively impact humanity such as MIT Solve. 

We have 2 full-time staffs. 

1) Ajiri Gunn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/aj...):

Team lead and software engineer.

2) Ufuoma Gunn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gu..): Marketing and public relations. 

We also have 1 contract staffs.

1) Prudence Francis : Graphics design. 

We are well positioned to deliver this solution because we have over four years of combined experience working on e-commerce and artificial intelligence solutions in  Nigeria. 

Moreover,  we have been in the shoes of blue collar entrepreneurs. We also have several connections who are in such position and at the same time pursue university education. Our understanding of the people's needs makes us strategically positioned to deliver a viable solution. 

Our solution is essentially a service that connects businesses (SMEs) to a large audience of prospective clients. 

Finance (money) would be the key resource required to run this business. With it, access to the internet and payment for cloud services would not pose a challenge. 

Our main database would be hosted on Google's firebase servers while our artificial intelligence models would run on Microsoft azure servers. Both of which require no special permissions.

Our key activities would be the daily update of subscription states and answering the queries of our users. Eventually, our activities would come to include the selection of certain businesses to receive publicity on our social media pages. 

Upon launch, we would reach out to prospective users via social media. Since our solution affects both business owners and their clients, we would achieve a lot of attention. 

We estimate that at least 20% if the current population of business owners numbering over 10 million in Nigeria would be willing to subscribe to our service. If so, they would serve an even greater number of clients in need of their services who would also be users of the Gmart.ng mobile application. 

Our revenue model is simple:

Business Service Subscriptions=60%

Item sales and adverts=40%.

Our profits would be invested in achieving wider coverage of our mobile application by making it compatible with all types of devices. We would also  be implementing user requested features. 

I am applying to Solve because I have a solution to one of the globes's most pressing challenges. 

Most people from low income communities (especially in Nigeria) are entrepreneurs in one way or the other and require a medium to market their business. The COVID19 pandemic has caused loss of jobs to many forcing them to turn to personal businesses for income at the same time, the pandemic renders the already existing (expensive and inconvenient) means of marketing ineffective as regular markets and even the streets in many countries are now on lock down. 

Gmart.ng offers a modern and convenient platform where businesses can advertise to a large audience for next to nothing. The benevolence of Sponsors such as MIT Solve would bring the best version of this solution to life. 

Our goal is to provide a platform (mobile application) where people with marketable skills can turn their skills into business services and reach a large audience of prospective clients at the same time for next to nothing.

We would bring elegance and sophistication (artificial intelligence) to even the lowliest of professions by providing a modern platform for them to market their business. Thus we would enble them appeal to a large audience of prospective clients. 

We qualify for this prize because our solution enables anyone with an android device to become an entrepreneur and at the same time advertise their goods and services to a large audience as long as they have marketable goods or skills. Thus, our solution eliminates the daunting capital costs of owning a shop and advertising to a large audience so that even those skilled workers from poor and low income backgrounds can be successful entrepreneurs.

If selected for this prize, we would be able to offer very low subscription rates (maximum of 0.5 USD per month) by the time we launch as the prize would be enough to cater for the estimated server costs for at least a year. Hence, we would be able to solve the problem of "Good jobs and Inclusive Entrepreneurship" even better by making our solution affordable to people of very little means and still make significant profit. 

We qualify for this prize because our solution uses artificial intelligence (semantic search)  to enable small and fledgling businesses advertise to a very large audience of prospective clients. 

Gmart.ng is essentially a database of goods and services available to anyone with a mobile device (android). When a user requires the services of a certain type of professional, lack of formal education or even logophilia of either client or businessman may hinder both parties from connecting as the keyword or phrase used to search for the professional may not be used by the target professional in writing his or her profile. Our platform eliminates this complication by using semantic search models to connect businesses to clients so even when a client searches for a "tailor", search results on the Gmart.ng platform may also include those described as "fashion designer(s)".

Using artificial intelligence, we would serve humanity by enabling small businesses advertise their services to a large audience of interested client. 

If selected for this prize, we would be able to offer very low subscription rates (as low as 0.5 USD per month) by the time we launch as the prize would be enough to cater for the estimated costs of running the artificial intelligence models (hosted on azure servers) for at least a year. Hence, we would be able to use AI to serve humanity even better by making our solution affordable to people with very little means of livelihood.