KEIPhone

The mission of KEIPhone is to provide free smartphones to women in developing countries via an advertising-based revenue model.  Using a smart phone will increase the incomes, productivity and resilience of women.   Simply owning a smart phone is proven to increase a household’s income by between 16% to 24%.  Agricultural productivity and profitability also increase with smart phone ownership. 

The business model allows KEIPhone to sell advertising to commercial businesses and development agencies which will appear on the lockscreen of our smartphones when first opened.  We believe that through advertising we can generate enough revenue to cover the cost of the phone, a solar charger, distribution, and on-going data incentives to women. 

Across Africa 450 million women don't own a smart phones.  In India that number is over 650 million women.  There is a market to scaling KEIPhone globally, with the income and empowerment impacts already documented.

KEIPhone is designed to address the digital gender divide, and the barrier that lack of smartphone ownership presents to women becoming economically empowered.

The largest mobile gender gap is in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa where women are 23% and 13% less likely than men to own a mobile device and 51% and 37% less likely to use mobile internet.  Limited levels of mobile ownership and use by women not only reflect existing gender inequalities, but also threaten to compound them. If not addressed, women risk being left behind as societies and economies digitize. 

There is a significant gender gap in smartphone ownership, with women in low-and middle-income countries 20 per cent less likely than men to own one. Women are much less likely than men to purchase their own smartphone, and have less autonomy and agency in smartphone acquisition. However, many women express a strong intention to acquire a smartphone. In Uganda, where we will pilot KEIPhone only 13% of women and 19% of men own a smart phone, compared to overall phone ownership rates of 65% for women and 80% for men. In India, our largest potential market, again only 13% of women own a smartphone.

KEIPhone is an application preloaded onto smartphones. KEIPhone offers three types of ads: banner, apps, and video.  All ads have click-through capacity.  A banner ad is a simple visual ad.  An app ad will allow the user to click through and download an app.  The video ad will allow the user to view a short video clip – similar to a TV commercial.

There are two sources of advertising on the platform: commercial advertising and non-profit development advertising.  KEIPhone will allow for a highly targeted, language-appropriate mass media campaign - which women can engage privately.  Of note, it will also allow for timely, highly specific information to be sent even in highly insecure environments.

KEIPhone can collect data from users via IVR surveys, or text surveys.  Information garnered from surveys enable us to personalize and target information and advertisements. 

KEIPhone will provide free data to users in the form of incentives.  When women watch videos or when they take surveys, they will receive free data as a reward.  This method offers an incentive to women to engage with the advertising while ensuring they have the needed data to become active users of the phone. 

For the world’s most marginalized women, a mobile phone doesn’t just make their life more convenient; it can help them build an entirely new life. That’s because connectivity is a solution to marginalization.  If you’re a woman who has never stepped into a bank, mobile banking offers you a foothold in the formal economy and a chance at financial independence. If you’re expected to do all the cooking, cleaning, and child-rearing, your income potential improves dramatically as you gain opportunities to connect with customers, trainings, and professional organizations—all from your home. If you’re worried about the stigma you’ll encounter when you ask for contraceptives at your local clinic, an e-commerce delivery platform can help you reassert control over your body and your future.  In other words, women are not only using their mobile phones to access services and opportunities. They’re using them to change social norms and challenge the power structures that perpetuate gender inequality.

As the challenge describes, over half of Africa's population is still excluded from the digital economy.  A key component of building the digital infrastructure is ensuring that women have smartphones to access internet.  Affordability is women's top barrier to phone ownership.   KEIPhone overcomes this barrier by providing the phone free to women.   

Data costs are also a challenge to women using smart phones. We will ensure that downloaded ads are data free for the user.  KEIPhone will also use airtime and data rewards as an incentive for users.

We will provide training during distribution to overcome digital literacy barriers.

We have a prototype developed and have done user testing.  The full KEIPhone app will be finished in August. The pilot starts in September.

For the pilot we partnered with CARE, a large NGO, to distribute phones to women in their savings groups in Bushenyi, Uganda.  Our CTO is Ugandan and will oversee the pilot.

The pilot will reach 100 women.  The pilot is designed to generate data to adjust and validate the business plan. Specifically, we need to understand how many women become regular users of the phone (both DAU and MAU), how they interact with the ads (ad click-thru, video, download and survey rates), and client satisfaction rates.   For the pilot we have the following advertising: a 6-part financial literacy program, a financial management app, a bank, a maternal health international NGO, pay-as-you-go solar, a commercial agriculture input supplier and both a fintech and an agtech app. 

KEIPhone uses advertising revenue to subsidize the cost of the phones, enabling us to offer it free to women.  Affordability is their top barrier to mobile device ownership.  There are currently few programs focusing on the free distribution of phones to women, and those are grant-based and therefore limited in scale. KEIPhone would be the first program to look at distributing free phones on a commercial basis at scale.

If successful, KEIPhone could change the model for paying for phones in developing countries, switching the cost from the user to the advertiser.

KEIPhone is also an innovation for advertisers in these markets.  Advertisers have zero ability to target advertising to poor, rural people. KEIPhone would provide a platform for targeted advertising based on client data - a platform for the 74% of the population that isn't currently reached in Sub-Saharan Africa.

0, 100, 1 million

Full time - 2

Part time - 1

Lauren Hendricks is CEO and Co-Counder.  She is a global expert with 20 years’ in international development and financial inclusion, she works to engage technology and private sector to address the critical challenges of our time.  She has partnered with banks, microfinance institutions, mobile network operators, and others in the private sector to adapt products and services to meet the needs of the poor, and to ensure that participants benefitted from new, digital financial services.  She has designed and scaled an initiative in Africa that ultimately reached over 10 million people across 27 countries, mostly women.  She brings a deep understanding of the financial inclusion sector in Sub-Saharan Africa, with experience in digital financial services, payment systems, and emerging technology trends.  
She is responsible for project design and implementation.  She will assume responsibility for the on-the-ground operations.  

Jim Cox is a Co-Founder.  He has 20 years’ experience in livelihood and health programming globally.  Mr. Cox will manage the business side of the pilot while also contributing to the health-related components.  He currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer of Helen Keller Intl, based in Washington, D.C. 

Joseph Capito is the CTO and Co-Founder.  He has over 10 years experience in software engineering, with a focus on Android App Development.  He is based in Kampala, Uganda.

Our current team of Co-Founders represents the type of diversity we will seek in the organization and in our leadership team as we grow.  Our CEO is a women, and our CTO is an African national.