On Thursday 14th of July, we hosted Safaricom Ltd and over 90 bloggers at Nailab as Safaricom got to expound on their new products Little Cab Kenya and Ready Business. The main agenda was to give thorough insight into the new Little Cab Kenya app and the Ready Business model created by Safaricom for businesses.
Not enough people are embracing technology in the day to day running of their businesses. And they’re missing out #ReadyBusiness
— FemmeHub (@FemmeHub) July 14, 2016
The MC for the evening was Kennedy Kachwanya who moderated a panel consisting of:
- Fredrick Kiio – Head of Department, Enterprise Commercial Operations, Segments and CVM
- Kamal Budhabbatti – CEO and Founder, Craft Silicon
- Klaire Muriithi – Brands and Communications Manager, Safaricom Business
- Joel Macharia – CEO and founder, Abacus
The panel started the discussion with the panel giving an overview of what Little Cab and Ready Business was all about. Little Cab is the new taxi hailing service that was launched in Kenya by Safaricom in conjunction with Craft Silicone, the company behind the creation of the app. They further explained that they sought to create a product that was tailor made for the Kenyan market while offering more than what their rival Uber couldn’t.
Are you a small business person? Take the #ReadyBusiness index and see how you score. See how you can improve your business using technology
— Wanjiru Kihusa (@wanjirukihusa) July 14, 2016
On the other hand, Ready Business is a suite of products namely voice, mobile money transfer, data and cloud services offered by Safaricom to businesses in order for them to utilize on technology and ICT platforms to run their businesses effectively. Little Cab for example is a perfect example of a Ready Business. Fredrick Kiio further stressed their keenness on improving overall standards in the transport industry as well as revolutionizing the culture of taxi drivers operations as well as safe driving practices and ownership.
Safaricom is diversifying the market and challenging the companies that have stack to one of kind of business for centuries #LittleCabKe 1/2
— faisal Ismail (@FaisalTheIsmael) July 14, 2016
Kamal Budhabbatti, CEO Craft Silicone gave the audience a peek into what to expect from Little Cab in the near future by highlighting on the fact that they are yet to come up with a USSD code where one can order a ride in case they cannot access the app, an option of being able to sambaza a ride among many other features. This is in a bid to ensure that one doesn’t need to have a smartphone in order to get a cab.
Thank you B.A.K.E for having Fred,Kamal,Joel and I to crack #ReadyBusiness and #LittleCabKe I am honored. pic.twitter.com/B5ah5mHF5F
— Klaire Muriithi (@KlaireBrandBoss) July 14, 2016
As the panel discussion came to an end, the audience was given time to ask questions and seek further clarification. In the end, all the participating and attending members were awarded with Kshs. 1,000 bob worth of free rides that were valid for 48hours.