Social gaming platform, Jooist founded by Waliaula Makokha won today’s Seedstars Startup World Nairobi held at the GrowthHub.
Jooist beat 17 other startups from Kenya to emerge the regional Seedstars World start-up competition winner. Uhired.me emerged third while Lipisha came second, both startups incubated at GrowthHub.
Seedstars World is an initiative launched by Seedstars SA, a Swiss-based company which launches ideas, grows startups and builds companies. The finals will be held in February 2012 in Switzerland where Jooist will meet other regional winners to compete for the top prize. Though the rest did not win they can still be voted in by the public on the Seedstars website. Seedstars allows in 5 other start-ups to be chosen by online viewers to compete in the final round.
According to Pierre-alain Masson co-founder Seedstars World, “The presence of incubators and accelerators in Nairobi has helped startups perfect the art of pitching. Their products have also become better due to the mentorship they gain. I could see growth from the many startups that pitched.”
Jooist had its product clearly developed and already on the market. Some of its achievements include contracts with device manufacturers to supply social gaming software and content e.g. Samsung Africa, Tecno Telcom. Contracts with mobile agencies to sell targeted mobile ads via our mobile channels e.g. Thumbtribe, South Africa and TwinPine, Nigeria. Contracts with mobile game publishers to provide high quality, Jooist-enabled games to its platform e.g. Contracts with mobile game publishers to provide high quality, Jooist-enabled games to our platform e.g. Herocraft (Russia), FuguMobile (China), Indiagames (India), SoftGames (Germany) and Booster (The Netherlands) and it has recently signed contracts with two local mobile carriers.
According to Waliaula, Jooist is a social gaming platform for feature phones to help people play anywhere anytime.
“It has long been possible for owners of smart phones to download games for free and share this experience with friends – now this is also possible with simpler mobile phones. Jooist allows you to download great games to virtually any mobile phone, and then share your high scores with friends, make challenges or participate in bigger competitions.”
Jooist is the world’s first social gaming network for feature phones and enables discovery and consumption of mobile games across mobile and web platforms. The Jooist platform has reward programs and social features for a deep and engaging experience and has an inventory of over 50 games supporting over 2000 mobile phones.
