Microsoft Imagine Cup
We won the 2018 Microsoft Imagine Cup Kenya
Here’s how we did it
Roughly a week to the submission deadline, Emmanuel, a buddy of mine and faculty mate reached out to me and asked for my cooperation in joining a team to take on the Microsoft Imagine Cup. The other guy in the team was also a very good friend of mine, Anthony. It was a no brainer.
But what are we even submitting ?
We had no immediate idea in mind that we could think of.So we went through a sesh of Hey, let’s do this …, let’s do that . Despite me being an idea guy, I was at pains to come up with a kickass idea. So, in came Calvin, our mentor and previous Imagine Cup Kenya winner, one-man student project incubator among other things. He quickly helped us identify problems we all faced as residents of Juja and soon enough, we decided to build Smart Soko.
Smart Soko ?
Smart Soko is a Demand Side Platform for groceries. We were solving the problem of groceries running out due to poor stocking by the mama mbogas. It featured an app, a web API, and a text messaging service for the mama mbogas. The consumer would search for his fave vendor via her phone number, send an order out to her and pay. Then she’d reserve the items for them, and they would pick them on their way home.
Just Do It
Have I mentioned all this happened within a week? It was a rather simple concept, I didn’t think we’d make top 3, let alone win. The blitz of the entire process taught me one thing that I used to know, but seemed to have forgotten. Just Do It. Just Hit Send. Just Submit. What’s the worst that could happen ?
