Buygaswitmobile.com

(Problem) About 60 million people in Nigeria alone have no access to clean cooking energy.

(Solution) Our goal is to reach energy empoverish communities in Nigeria with affordable clean cooking energy.  We do this by empowering women as trained and certified sales and safety agent who are trained in marketing, sales and leadership skills to deliver affordable clean  pay-as-you cook energy to communities across Nigeria.

(If scaled globally) Energy poverty could be eliminated about 43.6% in Africa,  promote good health for women living in energy empoverished communities, tackle harmful carbon monoxide that affect women and children's health as a result of cooking,  increasing household income and financial inclusion at the same time .

1.Lack of affordable cooking energy to  60 million homes living in energy empoverished communities in Nigeria .

2. Cost of using kerosene and biomass charcoal, lead to deforestation and causing GHG emission in Nigeria. 

Our solution, within the challenge, we are working on sustainable communities, our project www. buygaswitmobile.com is a web mobile app, that train women as sales and safety agents to provide millions of homes with access to affordable cooking energy ,eliminating GHG from deforestation  and promoting inclusion and economic prosperity for women at the same time.

3. Closing skill gap in women and youth in Nigeria to increase their opportunities in becoming gainfully employed in the formal sector which lead to more financial inclusive society.

Our stakeholders collective population is around 70million

 1. CUSTOMERS : We are serving two kind of market demography, 25.8% are the regular urban families with house hold of 2,3,4 and 5 members who cook daily meals but has not yet adopts clean alternative energy. They have paying jobs,averqge income per month is 50-200k, they own a mobile phone and shop online, they are connected to banking services using mobile phone.

2. 74.2% of our cutomers are the peri-urban population, who isnt all connected to formal banking services but live in energy poverty area (cooking fuel) and still depend on charcoal. They are trades men and women, farmers with income from their business and farming.

Stakeholder 3. Women preneurs: they are our partners whom we train in marketing and sales to deliver our product and services to rural population.

4. Young people mostly youths between age 18-35yrs who live and work with Tri-circle transporting commuters in Nigeria's cities. They live in poverty, their income is limited because they are mostly hired to work and remitt money to Tri-circle owners. 

Our solution is sustainable energy solution that is clean, affordable and accessible to communities who have or are living in cook fuel energy poverty due to either accessibility, affordability or safety challenge.

Our solution is designed around technology but more interestingly a viable business model that does not just close energy challenge gap but also empower our stakeholders(women and youths) while leveraging on technology using software as a service, web mobile application and AI.

Our process and technology: A software as a service SaaS company merging LPG cook fuel users with delivery agents across Nigeria by on-boarding both  custmers and service agents, processing payment and giving value to customers(LPG ccok fuel) in return. Order and delivery notification is authenticated in real time and our women preneurs and Tri-circle riders are paid per services rendered,creating extra income for them. Our platform works as a mobile web application.

Our initiative is supported by our deep commitment to its goals that support our theory of change or KPI meaninful impact on community or stakeholders, driving inclusion and sustainability of our model. Our consideration is as follow, are the women trained? Is there any skill learnt? Has their income(both women and Tri-circle riders mainly youths) increase?  Are there community assets like forest preserved? Is there a behavior change in community adoption to clean alternative energy? We think this is what makes us unique.

Secondly, we believe human centered innovation must be design driven with iteration as a continues process, so we are currently leveraging on AI as a a chat bot technology for rapid efficient customer service. We are testing our MVP to gain customer feedback.

A web mobile application that works as SaaS to deliver clean affordable energy to communities in Nigeria, we believe human centered innovation must be design driven with iteration as a continues process, so we are currently leveraging on AI as a a chat bot technology for rapid efficient customer service. We are testing our MVP to gain customer feedback.

Our process and technology: A software as a service SaaS company merging LPG cook fuel users with delivery agents across Nigeria by on-boarding both  custmers and service agents, processing payment and giving value to customers(LPG ccok fuel) in return. Order and delivery notification is authenticated in real time and our women preneurs and Tri-circle riders are paid per services rendered,creating extra income for them. Our platform works as a mobile web application.

We design our theory of change that link our activities to goals, our consideration is as follow, 1. Are the women trained? Is there any skill learnt? We train our women preneurs in marketing and sales skill, communication and leadership skills and they are free to be gainfully employed anywhere. 2. We look measure outcome as a result of skill gained, have their income(both women and Tri-circle riders mainly youths) increase?  Are there community assets like forest preserved? (Eliminating GHG emision as a result of deforestation to harvest firewood, charcoal ) 3.Is there a behavior change in community adoption to clean alternative energy? We think this is what makes us unique.

Currently, 103 are using my solution, in one year we predict to serve 1,500,000 people as we perfect prototype or MVP, in the next five years, we predict around 8,300,000 people should be active on our network.

Goals: First year, we want to on board at least 1million users in three cities in. Nigeria, train over 400 women in marketing and sales skill to be meaningfully employed as sales agent in about 40 communities

In five years time: Not less than 8,000,000 customers should be actively using our mobile platform to purchase clean alternative energy in Nigeria alone and also scale to other West -African market like Ghana.

Internal barrier: Current barriers are understanding the usability, desirability and viability of our innovative product ,services and iterating fast base on feed back received from customers or users.

Technical barrier: employing more developers and IT team to deploy solution and market solution after lunching .

Financial barrier: We need funding to develop new logistic channel in house to serve as back up delivery team to communities .

Brand/marketing: We need funding to roll-out marketing and jingles digital and traditional marketing avenue.

Within three months of effective operations, we should overcome those barriers.

Yes, we are part of Ventures Platform , and the relationship that exist between us is that of entrepreneurs and incubator, they are a leading catalyt of incubators and innovation centre who mentor young entrepreneurs with innovative startup that has the potential to reach  under-served communities in Africa by building the capacity of African Entrepreneurs and Innovators leveraging technology to create sustainable solutions to the most urgent problems on the continent.

Full time: 8

Part-time: 10

Contract: 2

Vision first ,  Skill set blend, value system , we complement each other both in skill set like creative, communicative, people-thinking skill, sales and marketing, leadership, emotional intelligence skills, technical .

We have both experience serving in the energy and tech sector, banking and finance and professional service . I have experience in the energy sector, oil & gas (down stream) while my colleagues have experience in the banking, professional services and technology and SaaS sector.

No, we have no current partnership with other organization

Business model : 1. Our product is clean affordable alternative energy, designed to serve communities who depend on forest derivatives like charcoal and biomass for cook fuel, 2. Technology deployed :Through our mobile web app platform (SaaS),we educate users on safety, we deliver faster, using connected system or distribution channels of trained women preneurs, Tri-circle men or logistic, we engage customer feedback in real-time AI chatbot to deliver on specifications like size of cylinder and installation manuals, 3 .We strenthen the tech eco-system by using a payment processing company - PAYSTACK(Payment processing company in Nigeria), using debit card connected to banking institutions. Defining market nitch or segment : We provide product and services to urban and peri-urban Nigerian community.
Strengthening business in Africa : Through partnerships (whole sale energy companies), we pick and distribute product through our channels. Using our web mobile app platform, customers make orders and get product and services delivered.
Social impact driven : Through our distribution channels: women and youth get empowered through constant marketing,sales and leadership training, they receive commission weekly,leading to increase household income and more financial inclusion.
Environmental Impact : Through our business values, forest are preserved,community assets are saved and GHG emission from depleted forest are minimized.

We will fund our work primarily through income from sales revenue and raising investment capital as equity from investors. and grants from donors. We will use two types of model from the example given : 1. Fee-for-Service Model
The fee-for-service model of social enterprise commercializes its social services, and then sells them directly to the target populations or "clients," individuals, firms, communities, or to a third party payer.
2. Employment Model
The employment model of social enterprise which provides employment opportunities and job training to its target populations or "clients," in our case stakehoders (Women-preneurs)people with high barriers to employment such as disabled, and at-risk youths. We plan to operates as an enterprise employing its stakeholders and sells its products or services in the open market.

Solve is not just a funding opportunity platform but a learning and networking place, our goal is to connect into SOLVE ecosystem of learning for valuable and priceless insight to develop our business model to serve our community better in Nigeria, we would love to connect to SOLVE tech experts to enable us develop a  robust web mobile platform and finally to raise funding  too,connecting to SOLVE funding community to raise investment capital either as grant or equity to implant or roll-out project in Nigeria.

I did not select other.

SOLVE first and secondly Y-conbinator and reason is, we want an accelerator program designed for innovators that merge technology for good, empowering communities and generating income.

Basically IA would enable us through voice recognition and integrated  chatbot to efficiently serve our clients better and we plan to incorporate AI solely for customer or client acquisition, retaintion and relationship  management

Advancing our community driven model would enable us achieve our goals which are link to our theory of change and this is how we plan to utilize the prize money from GM prize on community driven innovation prize :

We train our women preneurs in marketing and sales skill, communication and leadership skills and they are free to be gainfully employed anywhere. 2. We  measure outcome as a result of skill gained, have their income(both women and Tri-circle riders mainly youths) increase?  Are there community assets like forest preserved? (Eliminating GHG emision as a result of deforestation to harvest firewood, charcoal ) 3.Is there a behavior change in community adoption to clean alternative energy? We think this is what makes us unique.

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