enabled.WORLD

Application developers in emerging economies have limited financial and human resources. These often are exhausted before a minimum viable product is produced.

Enabled WORLD is a “social business”, building a free-to-use, cloud-based business platform offering functionality, via API for Messaging, Mobile Wallets, Trusted Identity and Reputation. By providing frequently required, yet complex functionality, developers can focus resources on building the unique aspects of their vertical applications.

WORLD also negotiates favourable tariffs and direct integration with mobile network operators (MNOs) for mobile data, SMS, USSD and mobile money systems, allowing these developers to offer their services cost effectively (or free) to end users. Contrary to OTT providers, WORLD works in cooperation with MNOs to grow network traffic. The WORLD app is a live technology demonstrator of this platform.

By reducing costs, WORLD facilitates a sustainable ICT economy, fostering entrepreneurship, jobs and the development of applications to address local and global needs.

Among the many problems in developing economies, WORLD has identified the following that we believe we can mitigate:

1. Mobile data is expensive (Wi-Fi is not available as an alternative). This leads to bill-shock & below global average data consumption. Consequently, digital skills and internet awareness are poor;
2. Up to 50% of users still use legacy phones (i.e. not smartphones). There is no unified messaging between Legacy and Smartphone users, leading to a large group of socially isolated consumers.
3. Unaffordability, risk, and inaccessibility to information, impacts women and marginalised groups disproportionately;
4. MNOs suffer declining SMS and USSD revenue as OTT services offer competing products and extract value;
5. Local ICT economies are non-existent due to high entry barriers and poor success rates of local app developers leading to low levels of innovation and few new revenue streams;
6. Due to memory limitations of low-end phones it is difficult to persuade users to install a new app and thus to achieve a critical mass of users;

Due to the above issues, economic development, employment opportunities and product innovation are stunted. These issues are faced by 100 of millions of users globally but especially in Africa and Asia.

WORLD is developing a cloud based (AWS) business/IT platform that includes four of the key functions required in any serious mobile application i.e.: 

• Messaging (full featured, including geo-spatial)
• Reputation/voting/opinions
• Wallet (including open interfaces to mobile money systems)
• Trusted Identity

This platform is available to developers to use free-of-charge, white labelled, via API, or by building a service onto the WORLD app. The WORLD app is an extensible technology demonstrator. Both methods fast-track product development. Any developer using the WORLD platform has access to all the WORLD customers, thus instantly having an established customer base. Linking to the WORLD app avoids the onerous task of persuading users to install a new app. WORLD encourages collaboration between third party developers to further lower costs, increase competitiveness; ensure success.

WORLD also negotiates favourable, use-case specific, tariffs (and reverse-billing agreements) including direct integration to the MNO’s mobile data, mobile money, SMS and USSD systems. These exceptional commercial terms assists developers in offering low cost/free services to end users.

WORLD aims to develop a community of 50 mllion end-users within 5 years. WORLD earns commission on mobile money transactions and provides services to enterprises, brands and celebrities to fund the development and operational expenses.

WORLD improves circumstances of three groups; End users, Application developers/entrepreneurs and Mobile operators.

End Users:

The end users in developing economies are typically young (50% of Africans are < 20 years old), under-employed, with low income yet hungry for new opportunities. As formal employment is scarce, many are self-employed in micro-enterprises as traders, messengers etc. WORLD staff have spent hundreds of hours conducting face-to-face interactions with people on the streets in Eswatini, where the WORLD pilot is located.

Due to low income, end users typically have old model or second-hand phones with little spare memory. They are very sensitive to data tariffs, to the extent that application executables are shared from other phones not from an app store. Typical total data consumption is <100MB per month. Up to 50% of phones are legacy phones (i.e.no data capability).

Developers:

App developers typically work in small teams and part-time. They have limited capital and frequently run out of resources before completing a product.

Mobile Operators:

MNO’s suffer declining revenue on traditional services (SMS and Voice) as OTT services compete. They fear losing further revenue and are suspicious of new ideas. Careful negotiation is required to persuade them of novel concepts.

The WORLD concept breaks down competitive silo behaviour and replaces it with a cooperative model which brings benefits to all stakeholders:

• WORLD offers a free-of-charge open platform providing critical functionality, access to an established app and a common customer base;
• End users consume the services offered to fulfill the economic cycle.
• MNO’s offer revolutionary use-case specific tariffs and direct access to network nodes to address niche opportunities;
• Developers/entrepreneurs create services on the platform to meet local needs;

This facilitates the creation of a sustainable ICT sector, good jobs and general economic upliftment for all parties.

WORLD is innovative in several respects.

Shareholding model

WORLD has a novel, unconventional funding model. All contributions to the WORLD project (cash or kind) are recognised by the award of “Memory-of-Effort” (MoE) tokens according to a value-of-work table. Cash is more valuable than labour as it is post-tax. MoE share represents the relative shareholding of all contributions. There are no reserved shares for “founders”- all contributors are treated equally. WORLD will also recognise 100 “founders” who contribute a minimum of $2400 and who bring valuable expertise or influence to the WORLD project. MoE is tradeable.

Business model

WORLD is not aware of another enterprise to make such a service development and delivery platform available free-of-charge to third party developers.

WORLD is unique in seeking a collaborative model between several parties:

• negotiation of more appropriate tariffs on behalf of third-party developers across multiple MNOs and multiple countries;
• provision of APIs to MNO mobile money, SMSC & USSD nodes;
• provision of a unified messaging platform between smartphones and legacy phones
• offer to share a common user base with third party developers of vertical products;
• offer to share extensibility in a common app;
• co-operation with MNO’s rather than competition with them

Competing apps with similar functionality:

• “Ayoba” offers zero-rated messaging and a future unified messaging capability-offered by MTN (a large pan-African mobile operator).
• “Moya” offers zero rated messaging – offered by BiNu (www.bi.nu) across several countries in Africa.

The back-end system is programmed primarily in Erlang as it is well suited to managing multiple sessions and evolved from telecommunications infrastructure requirements, providing a robust and scalable base.

Services are exposed to developers through technologies like REST APIs and web sockets.

The platform is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure to ensure low start-up costs scalability and reliability, and leverage data connectivity options. AWS has an Africa Region based in Cape Town, hence security concerns relating to personal data leaving the continent can be addressed.

The WORLD app as the initial end-user access mechanism to platform services is a native Android app as this is by far the dominant smartphone operating system in developing economies. However, an even larger proportion of  the population only have access to feature phones so WORLD is building the unified communication platform using tried and tested legacy SMS and USSD technology. SMS and USSD also find a place as backup bearers in the case of poor mobile data coverage. This gives the app greater apparent reliability.

The executable is as small as possible to minimise download costs and footprint because there is a high penetration of old model smartphones in the market which have limited storage space for apps. The app can also be downloaded without needing a Play Store account to reduce friction among less literate users.

The WORLD app communicates to the back-end via reverse-billed URLs ensuring that the end user experiences a zero-rated data session.

The technologies selected by WORLD are proven to work at scale. WORLD has tested both vertical and horizontal scaling of the infrastructure and back end system.

WORLD has a working messaging app, supporting over 2000 monthly users, running on a reverse-billed URL at two MNOs. There is a native Android app with proven support of text, images and voice notes. Voice calling has been omitted as this erodes MNO revenue, while video is too expensive to offer on a reverse-billed service.

World has also successfully integrated its app directly into the MNO’s mobile money system allowing “money” to be attached to a message (as one would attach an image). World is currently working on a unified messaging service to include legacy phones. Identity and reputation functionality is also in development.

SMS is a well-established technology while USSD is extensively used to implement menu systems and familiar to end users in developing economies. WORLD will exploit both technologies to provide further reliability to the WORLD app and provide alternative communication channels.

WORLD’s cloud provider, AWS, is the largest globally. Erlang is the basis of the WhatsApp back-end so has been tested under extreme conditions.

Actions/Activities:

• Development of the WORLD cloud platform with Messaging, Wallet, Trust and Reputation functionality;
• Develop WORLD app as a technology demonstrator;
• Negotiate with MNOs for preferential tariffs and access to network nodes. Concluded reverse-billed agreement and mobile money integration and revenue share agreement with both operators in Eswatini (Swaziland);
• Recruitment of local brand ambassadors in Eswatini;
• Promote app within initial target country to end users, developers, entrepreneurs and enterprises.

Outputs:

• Interest from third parties (content providers, schools, enterprises & brands- WORLD provides internal corporate communications for OK Foods);
• Growing end user customer base – WORLD has 2000+ monthly active users;
• Growing experience and understanding within WORLD of the market needs and technical requirements – WORLD has spent over 200 man hours in face-to-face engagement with customers on the streets while promoting and installing the app.

Short term outcomes:

• Interest from third parties (developers, WORLD has partnered with NGOs e.g. Health Institute (www.ghi.ngo) to facilitate women’s’ health and is in negotiations with the Imbali Foundation (for young women) in Eswatini;
• Growing end user base.

Medium term outcomes:

• Increased technical competence and level of innovation among local developers;
• Growing portfolio of applications, services and products using WORLD as a platform regionally;
• End-users (“WORLD Citizens”) find value and economic advantage in using WORLD-based services;
• MNO’s recognise that value of the WORLD collaborative model and case specific tariffing;
• WORLD platform is implemented and supported in multiple countries in Southern Africa with a customer base of 50 million.

Long term outcomes:

• Sustainable ICT economy, offering multiple job opportunities in WORLD countries;
• Extensive community of entrepreneurs exploiting the facilities of the WORLD platform;
• WORLD platform is implemented and supported in multiple regions/globally;
• General economic upliftment due to increased job opportunities, efficient economic transactions and expanded market for products and services attributable to WORLD.

WORLD project directly impacts the entrepreneur/developers and the end users of their services. The WORLD project should positively impact the families of these people as well, so impacted people may be a factor of ~5 times higher (4.7 children/women is the average in sub Saharan Africa) than the number of direct users.

A WORLD citizen is anyone having a WORLD ID, i.e. someone registered in the WORLD platform, and using its underlying services, whether via the WORLD app or as a white-labelled product or service.

We currently have 2000+ monthly active WORLD citizens in Eswatini (population 1.1m) across both MNOs.

We aim to have 400,000 monthly WORLD Citizens within 12 months across several countries in southern Africa (including: Eswatini, Botswana (pop 2.5m), Lesotho (2.2m), Namibia (2.4m), Mozambique (31m) Malawi (19m), Zambia (18m), Tanzania (60m).

After 5 years WORLD aims for 50 million users across several countries in sub-Saharan Africa and therefore potentially an impact on ~250m people. There is potential for the WORLD platform to be used further afield given sufficient exposure.

During the next year WORLD plans to:

• accelerate the rate of development of both the cloud platform and the app by employing full-time developers;

• attract third-party developers by promotions at universities and user groups;
• expand penetration and rollout to other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, acquiring 400k citizens from the efforts of WORLD and third party collaborators;
• develop a vibrant community of content providers, partners, and SMMEs using the services;
• establish a growing revenue stream based on revenue share from mobile money transactions and services provided to enterprises and brands to cover development and operational costs;
• have a number of products and services that address local and regional needs.

Within five years WORLD plans to achieve:

• a significant footprint in sub-Saharan countries and hopefully further afield;
• a widespread understanding among MNOs, of the business benefits of integration with WORLD and subsequently MNOs requesting such integration;
• a citizen base of 50m, and significantly more people benefiting indirectly from the platform.
• the release of WORLD as an open-sourced project to encourage more rapid evolution;
• a vibrant community of collaborators who have developed an extended set of features, interfaces, products and services based on the WORLD underling platform; in effect a self-sustaining ecosystem based on WORLD;
• the realisation that products and services addressing local needs, also address similar needs globally.

WORLD’s desire to assist in the creation of better jobs and more efficient business practices. Consequently, WORLD supports and encourages open source software and collaboration and replication of the concepts by others.

Funding:

WORLD has to date raised an equivalent of $850 000 in cash donations and free labour (mainly labour) from contributors. In the immediate term, WORLD needs funds to accelerate technical development by employing full time developers and providing remuneration to current contributors.

MNO cooperation:

On-going effort is required in negotiations with MNOs to persuade them that more flexible tariff structures are required to secure business opportunities that currently are not economically viable. For example, current SMS tariffs are prohibitively expensive and unsuited for use in instant messaging services. A use-case specific SMS tariff for low-value, high volume services would allow an SMS based instant message service to be implemented. This would be the basis of a unified legacy/smartphone messaging platform. SMS revenue could be increased overall, as the required drop in tariff would be more than offset by a corresponding increase in volume (in particular by also being able to address the smartphone base).

End users:

The larger the WORLD user base, the easier it is to attract attention from all parties. Therefore, the acquisition and retention of users is critical. This involves promotion of the app within influential communities and removing all obstacles which may prevent users from installation and sustained use.

Collaborators:

Finally, a vibrant community of collaborators is required to build vertical applications on the WORLD platform. Effort is required to identify, promote and educate collaborators on the functionality offered by WORLD and to support them in their early stages of development.

Funding:

WORLD is pursuing several funding initiatives including:

• Offering shareholding in WORLD via Memory of Effort tokens for any contributions in cash or kind;
• Allowing, by invitation, up to 100 influential people to be called “founders” for a fee of $2400.00 each;
• Requesting larger donations from angel investors;
• Pursuing grants where applicable;
• Earning revenue from revenue share arising from any mobile money transaction facilitated by WORLD;
• Charging enterprises, brands and celebrities for services relating to advertising channels etc. on WORLD.

MNO negotiations:

MNOs are traditionally conservative and suspicious of new concepts. Senior and experienced staff are required to negotiate the required terms and conditions with C-suite executives. Fortunately, WORLD has very experienced staff who are able to achieve this, albeit still with some effort.

End users:

The acquisition of end users is critical. As with most things the first million are the most difficult to acquire. WORLD is addressing this in multiple ways including via local brand ambassadors, face-to-face engagements, Google ads and other advertising, partnerships with NGOs, addressing churches, schools, trade unions, youth organisations etc.

Recruitment of collaborators:

WORLD will seek entrepreneurs and third party developers by promoting the WORLD platform on the WORLD app itself, at universities, in technical discussions groups, with government bodies etc.

WORLD’s currently staff complement is:

• 7 full time workers
• 3 part-time brand ambassadors
• 3 part-time market development ambassadors

However over 40 unique people have contributed to the WORLD project over that last 3 years. Twenty-five of them have contributed sufficient to earn approximately 1% of more of the shareholding.

The WORLD full time team of seven, comprises senior telecommunication engineers and marketing staff who have a combined 150 years in the mobile telecommunications industry. They are approaching the end of successful and rewarding working careers as Technical Specialists, Consultants, CTOs and CEOs and have embarked on WORLD as a last project to leave a legacy for others to build on and simply for fun, before retiring;

• All members have worked both within MNOs and in companies supplying services to MNOs, hence have experience of both side of the industry;
• We have extensive global experience having worked in Africa, Australia, Mexico, Middle East, New Zealand, UK and US.
• The core technical team have a long history of developing novel products and solutions, several of which have been commercialised or formed the basis of new companies. These solutions are in the areas of Automatic Frequency Planning, Configuration Management, Performance Management, Dynamic Tariffing, Mobile advertising and more recently, the WORLD project.
• The team are used to interfacing with C-suite executives and have the gravitas and confidence required to persuade them to consider non-traditional and challenging concepts (such as Dynamic Tariffing, WORLD and opening access to network nodes). Such discussions would be unconscionable for a young entrepreneur wishing to achieve the same outcome.

WORLD currently partners with:

• The mobile operators (MTN Eswatini and Eswatini Mobile) + currently in negotiations with several others in Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania and Malawi;
• Gateway Health Institute (www.ghi.ngo) which provides health services to women. Gateway in turn partners with the following organisations:

• Aids Foundation;
• Choice Trust;
• Department of Health: South Africa;
• Frontline Aid;
• Girl Child Rights;
• Hivos;
• Right to Care;
• Roddenberry Foundation;
• SABR;
• Save the Children;
• ViiV Healthcare;
• Wits University.

WORLD is currently negotiating with:

• Imbali Foundation which supports girls and young women in Eswatini.
• Various schools
• Various churches

In the near future WORLD will seek partnerships with universities, technical colleges, and government projects working towards the development of the ICT sector. 

World brings value to stakeholders in the following ways:

End users:

• WORLD app is free to use (no data charges). This benefits low income and marginalised groups by allowing them to access information to be economically active;
• Improved access to information, hence better decision making and literacy;
• Allows legacy phone users to participate in with smartphone users. They would otherwise be socially isolated;
• Simplifies the current very cumbersome USSD based method of money transfers;
• Users can be entirely anonymous -reduces harassment;
• Improved prospects in concluding business transactions due to a trusted identity and credible reputation.
• Co-operates with MNO’s for mutual benefit, unlike OTT service provides who seek to keep all high value business and reduce the MNO to a bit-pipe;
• Improves product innovation based on messaging, mobile wallet, trust and reputational functionality.

Collaborating entrepreneurs:

• Attractive tariffs for data, SMS & USSD;
• Facilitating app adoption and allowing integration to the WORLD app;
• Lowering the cost of app development by providing commonly used functions;
• Provides a common platform that allows new apps to tap into an existing user base;
• Offers a resilient infrastructure on which to build scalable vertical products which can be fully industrialised should they become successful;
• Helps developers port a new mobile service across multiple operators and countries.

Mobile Operators:

• Opens new use-cases and revenue for data, SMS and USSD.
• Creates new revenue streams from enterprises, which do not cannibalise revenue from current end users;
• Increases (including legacy phone) end user usage of the internet;

WORLD is pursuing several methods of funding including:

• Offering shareholding in WORLD via Memory-of-Effort tokens for contributions in cash or kind;
• Allowing, by invitation, up to 100 influential people to be called founders for a fee of $2400.00 each.
• Requesting larger donations from angel investors;
• Pursuing grants where applicable;
• Earning revenue from revenue share from any mobile money transaction facilitated by WORLD;
• Charging enterprises, brands and celebrities for services relating to advertising channels etc. on WORLD;
• Charging enterprises for updates on a user’s identity profile (e.g. change of address) -with the users permission of course.

Business modelling indicates that a revenue share on mobile money transactions is likely to be one of the more significant revenue streams. There is also the possibility of using the WORLD infrastructure and agreements (or modified agreements) to offering general purpose reverse billing services to any third party that wanted to zero-rate access to their web site or app. This is a rapidly growing opportunity as enterprises strive to drive traffic to their online services.

WORLD is confident that other revenue generating opportunities will present themselves as the project develops. WORLD’s objective is to be self-funding.

WORLD is applying to Solve to:

• have our ideas challenged by your evaluation team;
• get exposure to a larger audience who may resonate with the objectives of WORLD and may then be able to contribute in cash or kind;
• have access to technology and marketing experts who may be able to provide mentoring in specific areas;
• gain greater publicity for WORLD’s concepts;
• use as a reference when explaining the merits of WORLD’s concepts to mobile operators;
• gain experience in applying for grants;
• raise funding.

WORLD is looking for partners that can add value by:

• Growing the end user base
• Providing content of value to end users
• Interfacing services to WORLD
• Purchasing services from WORLD
• Assisting WORLD in recruiting third party developers/entrepreneurs
• Facilitating access to funding

The WORLD app is ideally suited to the needs of refugees and organisations supporting refugees. WORLD offers the following relevant features:

• Use of the app for messaging is free-of-charge (i.e. no end user data costs). This is valuable to people who may have low incomes, no access to top-up facilities, or no cash;
• Messaging is supported on smartphone and legacy phones, allowing communication between all members of the community;
• Messaging is geo-spatially aware so information and bolt-on applications can be geographically targeted and aware;
• The mobile money feature provides a convenient way to transfer funds particularly if formal bank accounts are not available (or obtainable). Fund transfer between countries is also possible allowing repatriation of funds from other family members;
• The Trusted identity and Reputation features allows refugees to quickly establishment themselves as trusted residents in a new country, and hence promotes their return to economic activity. This helps mitigates xenophobia which is common in many parts of the world.
• NGOs supporting refugees can create broadcast “topics” on WORLD that contain information relevant to refugees. Access to this information is free;
• Development of applications on the WORLD platform may be an option for technically competent refugees;
• WORLD is keen to assist NGOs who support refugees in developing content or services based on WORLD platform.

The WORLD app is ideally suited to the needs of women and girls and organisations supporting them. WORLD offers the following relevant features:    

• Use of the app for messaging is free-of-charge (i.e. no end user data costs). This is valuable to people who may have low incomes, no access to top-up facilities, or no cash. Women and girls are have disproportionately lower incomes;
• WORLD has public topics focused on women (see: “Here4Her”):
• WORLD allows legacy phone users to chat in groups with smartphone users. A disproportionate number of women use legacy phones;
• WORLD allows anyone to establish broadcast groups -ideal for women to promote their businesses.
• WORLD users can be entirely anonymous -reduces harassment.
• Wallet functionality allows convenient transfer of funds particularly if formal bank accounts are not available. Fund repatriation between countries is also possible;
• The Trusted identity and Reputation features allows women to quickly establishment themselves commercially, and hence promotes their economic activity.
• NGOs supporting women can create broadcast “topics” on WORLD that contain relevant information. Access to this information is free;
• WORLD is keen to assist NGOs who support women in developing content or services for the WORLD platform.
• WORLD already partners with Gateway Health Institute which address issues such as:

• Sexual Reproduction Health Rights,
• Child marriage,
• Female genital mutilation,
• Gender based violence,
• Menstrual health management.

and the Imbali Foundation which promotes the health, education and protection of girls and young women in Eswatini.

This whole application has been focussed on how WORLD facilitates good jobs and inclusive entrepreneurship.

In summary:

• WORLD provides a new collaborative model between Entrepreneurs/developers, Mobile operators and End users which facilitates the development of new sustainable mobile services;
• The model marshals the resources and strengths of each party to create an outcome which could not be produces by any one party individually;
• WORLD provides the catalysing initiative by providing a free-to-use feature rich development platform together with commercial agreements regarding tariffs, revenue share and integration to network nodes.
• Developers benefit from a common end user community, and an installed app on which to build;
• WORLD encourages collaboration between third party developers on the WORLD platform, for their mutual benefit;
• Having removed many of the commercial obstacles, the chances of success should be much improved.

WOLRD believes that because there is a symbiotic relationship between all parties in the ecosystem, a higher level of co-operation and mutual support will be achieved than under the current environment. This should lead to a growing and sustainable ICT sector, better jobs and improved services for end users in developing economies globally.

The WORLD app is ideally suited to the promotion of Adult Literacy and organisations supporting this. WORLD offers the following relevant features:

• Use of the app for is free-of-charge (i.e. no end user data costs). This is valuable to people who may have low incomes, no access to top-up facilities, or no cash. Typically, illiterate people have disproportionately lower incomes;
• WORLD Promotes access to good journalism by providing public topics giving access to:
o news and current affairs articles from various publishers
o searches into information repositories such as Wikipedia;
• NGOs supporting Adult Literacy can easily create:
o broadcast “topics” on WORLD that contain relevant information, chat groups, and general advice;
o more extensive and interactive services bolted onto the WORLD app. This means that NGOs don’t have to launch a dedicated app or direct customer to a dedicated web site;
• The wallet function can be used for subscription fees or the awarding of cash prizes for progress made;
• Trusted identity and reputation functions can be useful to track progress of students over time (with their permission);
• WORLD is keen to assist NGOs in developing content or services relating to adult literacy, for the WORLD platform. 

The WORLD project has the potential within the next 5 years to impact 50 million direct end users and 250 million indirectly (average of 4.7 children per woman in Africa). WORLD’s model would be applicable globally, with proportionally larger impact.

WORLD would use the Future Planet Capital funding to:

• Accelerate the rate of development of both by employing full-time developers to develop:
  • Unified messaging between legacy and smart phones (SMS <-> WORLD app)
  • Interfaces/API for third party integration
  • A curated portal for internet services
  • Mobile Money interfaces, Trust and Reputation functionality
• Develop other revenue generating business based on the established WORLD infrastructure (such a general purpose reversed-billed interface for third party app and web sites, not associated with the WORLD platform).

·        Promote WORLD concept to third-party developers & Entrepreneurs;

·        Expand penetration and rollout to other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa;