By Nana Appiah Acquaye, Accra, Ghana
The developers of Infoline, a new application which is a mobile and web service that connects consumers and businesses in emerging markets, say the application will help bridge the gap between businesses and their consumers.
Nandi Mobile, a technology start-up company, won the e-Business and Commerce category with its Infoline product at the recent 2013 World Summit Awards.
Speaking to Biztechafrica in an interview in Accra, the Business Director of Nandi Mobile, Edward Amartey-Tagoe, explains how his apps is geared towards assisting businesses to stay in touch with their consumers.
Biztechafrica: Tell me Edward, how do your apps work?
Nandi Mobile: Do you realise that when people give their addresses these days, they give an email address, landline, they will give a website, but what they miss is SMS or mobile numbers.
So what we are doing now is we are creating an SMS channel where consumers serve you with the company a reset in the comfort of their homes, and get a message to the company and the company will receive the message in the web up or dashboard we have designed for them. But what will make the two exciting is the narrative involved in that software.
From the dashboard, the company is able to analyse and see the sentiments of consumers. They are also able to get summary of what all the people are saying in a week, month, and that will also help the company to make to make certain business decisions as to whether the consumers are interested in a particular product or are more frustrated or relieved or not. So that is what we are presenting to the business coalition Ghana, and the latest addition is the smart phone edition, so we actually have an android tab, where people get SMS but can use the application to communicate with the business.
So essentially, let’s say it is whatsapp, where I have a platform between consumer and company, instead of consumer to consumer.
Biztechafrica: What brought about the idea to create such an app for the Ghanaian market?
Nandi Mobile: Just last week we won the World Summit award, which is an award being initiated by the United Nations.
What necessitated this software is the fact that business are not able to get in touch or too close to their consumers and not because they don’t want to, but because the tools available are either cumbersome or not too convenient for the normal coalition mark.
So we ask ourselves, how we can use a device like a mobile phone to bridge the gap between the consumer group and the corporate section? And that is how we came about with the info line service.
Biztechafrica: How is the apps development doing in Ghana?
Nandi Mobile: I need to be frank, there are so many challenges in Ghana and Africa, and we need access to internet, expertise, but there is so much interest from the group back here.
