Biasharabot, a Kenyan-based company that develops bots for small and medium sized enterprises to use to streamline their social media marketing and maximize the income. The bots enable them to respond to queries on time. TechMoran spoke to Biasharabot founders, who were incredibly excited to share with us their vision for their company moving forward.
Briefly tell us about yourselves, your educational background, team and how you came together to form
BiasharaBot was founded by Felix Cheruiyot and Moses Korir. Moses is a graduate of JKUAT with a BSc in Actuarial Science while Felix is graduate of Kenyatta University with Computer Engineering. We met in high school, and we have know each other for over 17 years.
How would you describe your company; how does it work and make money?
BiasharaBot is a startup that focuses on helping small and medium sized business sell more on social media providing tools which help increase engagement. The application features includes:
Ecommerce chatbot that is able to take the customer through the sale process until they confirm their order.
We also provide post manager where they can create marketing and schedule for posting on social media at specified times.
A message broadcast features which allows clients to send bulk messages to messenger accounts of their customers as a way of running promotion or informing customers about new product arrivals.
We have also integrated into:
M-Pesa so as to offer payment while still on Messenger using M-Pesa express checkout process.
Fulfilment providers like Sendy and we look forward to adding others like G4S and Wells Fargo. The client can compare the different cost of each provider and choose the cheapest one. They can also request for delivery at a click of a button.
The product is a software as a service and customers pay monthly subscription fee.
What market gap did you spot that motivated you to start the company?
We noticed a lot businesses do not have resources to employ someone to manage their social media accounts on a full time basis. This means they are not able to engage effectively on social media. Whenever a customer enquiries about a product on social media, if they are not responded to quickly the customer moves on to another seller thus the business misses out on sales opportunity. Also businesses do not have time to update their social media accounts regularly missing out on building loyalty with their customer which is critical in establishing repeat business. Many small businesses do not have an engagement tool they can use to inform customers about new products and offers or promotions they are running on a one on one communication.
How has uptake been like since you launched?
We had a successful beta test where customers made orders and they were delivered to successfully. We have now opened it to public and we have some clients who are using it. The feedback has been great and we are improving the product further based on customer
feedback.
Who is your major competition? What do you do different to distinguish yourself from them?
Our major competitors are mainly freelancers.
Being a SAAS product we provide a off-the shelf solution hence reduced cost and implementation time to the client. We have a strong team that works full-time on the product, and this helps us to innovate further and deploy best industry practices.
What are some of the biggest challenges you faced since the inception of the company?
The awareness of the chatbot concept by businesses is one of the challenges we have faced. We have been educating our customers on how chatbots works during the onboarding process.
What advice would you wish to share with aspiring African entrepreneurs?
To always develop their products or services with the customer. Working with the customer helps you so that you don’t develop product or services no one will buy. You will also get important feedback which will help you develop a product or service that is useful in solving customer problems.
