Albert Lyatuu from Tanzania and Sophie Stolle from Germany have launched Nitafutie, a virtual marketplace for used or new items that people can access without any internet connection, simply by using their phones. They call it a voice-based craigslist. Albert is an IT and business expert while Sophie holds a degree in African studies and Economics and has worked with several startups in Berlin.
It is as easy as calling a friend! Nitafutie then puts this data into the databank. If someone is looking to buy a phone, he or she calls Nitafutie, giving information about, their budget, their location, any additional information and the contact. Within 5 minutes, they will receive an SMS, providing contacts of sellers in their neighborhood, the items that they are supplying and the prices.
Buyer and seller can then meet up face to face. The buyer can have a look on the product and then decide to buy it. What Nitafutie basically does is to bring buyer and seller together β beyond their social networks that they usually use for those kind of things. If there is no entry matching with the request, Nitafutie notifies the buyer as soon as someone supplies, what he or she is looking for. After 10 days the buyer can extend their classified ad if they have not sold the item yet.
Yes, this is what will actually work! We talked to a lot of people here. There is a huge potential in the mobile sector, because this is what most of the people have access to. We intentionally decided to integrate voice, because we found out that many people trust voice more than SMS. What inspires us most, is the people that we create this for and the problems they face. We saw that most of the people would inquire their social network when they want to buy or sell something.
Sometimes you also need to travel far to close the deal. We want to make it easy for people to buy and sell stuff: We want them to access a marketplace, where they can easily trade with people in their neighborhood, just by using their phones, without relying on any internet connection.
