Titan Market
An online marketplace for SMEs in Africa, where entrepreneurs can create dedicated e-commerce stores accessible to customers on demand.
Charles Ivia, Ayiik Bul, Gladys Gachoka
Inspiration
Setting up an e-commerce store is expensive and time-consuming for SMEs. Often times, the ROI for creating an e-commerce store is too low as it is hard to market and attract customers. Primarily, e-commerce stores are expensive to build and manage because entrepreneurs build websites to get started. For new entrepreneurs, the challenge is making the first step and actually starting the business. Our aim is to simplify the process and cut the technical expenses and time required to create e-commerce stores.
With the COVID-19 pandemic our platform provides tools to keep the local marketplace functional and business operations relatively uninterrupted.
What it does
We provide a mobile and web based platform that enables SMEs to create and manage dedicated e-commerce stores that are accessible to customers on demand. The Titan Business app is designed to enable an entrepreneur to create a fully functional e-commerce store in minutes. The Titan Market app is a demand aggregator marketplace where customers can interact and shop with listed e-commerce stores.
How we built it
The Titan Market team is made up of students- all coming from different universities and backgrounds. The first challenge, was assembling a motivated and dedicated team. After the team was formed, work started on evaluating the idea and establishing whether we were going to solve a real problem. After the problem was sufficiently evaluated and understood, we selected out technology stack and build a prototype which we tested with our initial users.
Challenges we ran into
-Inadequate funds -A limiting tech stack- Firebase !! (We are in the process of updating our tech stack) -Few businesses out of the potential pool know about our platform and the value we are offering.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
-Our first customer. -A smart, strong and dedicated team. -Seeing Titan Market transform SMEs in Kenya, an e-commerce store at a time.
What we learned
-Talking to users is the best way to validate what your are doing. -Constant iteration eventually saves time. -Before Corona Virus we thought it would take at least 5 years before businesses really start to need e-commerce stores. That has been accelerated to months.
What's next for Titan Market
-Enabling as many SMEs as possible to keep operating despite the COVID-19 disruptions. -Growing our users and hitting a critical mass. -Raising funds -Innovating and improving the Titan Market platform.