Centum 3.0 New Phase?

Had posted about Centum funding startups through their foundation arm earlier then came across this:
Ben Maina, former Rupu CEO and co-
founder has today launched
blissful.co.ke, an online wedding
marketplace backed by Centum
Foundation from its recently launched
$5 million startup seed capital fund.
The exact amount Blissful has raised from
Centum Foundation has not been
disclosed but it’s likely to be around
$150,000 (Ksh15.3 million) which the
foundation said it would invest in each
eligible startup. With a rich resume for
starting the country’s first daily deals site,
building it and exiting to Ringier Africa,
Maina is less likely to fail or lose an
investors money and it won’t be surprising
for the firm to do another round soon.
Though Blissful.co.ke is not the first online
marketplace that aims to bring sanity to
the wedding and events industry, most of
the teams behind the marketplaces lack
the drive to make things happen and
maybe Maina will help ye all single guys to
plan for your weddings or parties easily.
To thousands others, Blissful will be a
platform to help them make money from
their photography companies, sound
systems among others. Users who are
satisfied with a service can rate or review
the vendors on the platform Yelp-style.
“We all have that friend or family member
who is looking for a way to grow his or her
photography / baking / decor / tents /
make-up business sustainably, Blissful is
what they have been waiting for. Ask them
to sign up for free and see the jobs
available on the platform, we only charge
them KES 100 ($1) to send a quote,”
Maina posted on Medium.
Maina adds that Blissful has been through
various pilots and has been tweaked for
over a year and once they were confident
the marketplace model is good to go, they
sought a financial partner to grow with.
“We met with Centum Foundation, almost
by chance, and we clicked mainly due to
the approach they took to funding and due
to our shared value for entrepreneurship,”
wrote Maina. “We hope to leverage this
relationship to grow and attract more local
investors to back local businesses.”
Some of the marketplaces Maina and his
team will work to beat include Wedding
Services Kenya, KenyanWeddings,
MyWedding.com, CelebrationsKenya
among others.
The $1 (Ksh 100) per quote sent is a great
idea, Blissful could still add premium
verified vendors with a reputable work
history who pay to display their badges
(portfolio, daily work etc) as some people
are skeptical that vendors might evade the
$1 by ignoring the intelligent dashboard to
doing business offline with the wedding
committees. However, the platform is still
new in the market and there could be
many iterations, after all startups are
known for experimenting just about
anything.
Unlike starters, the ex-Rupu CEO isn’t new
to such a business. His work at Rupu
meant he did most of the selling as the co-
founder and CEO. Most of these vendors
will celebrate his comeback especially
those into Rupu Travel.His varied business
experiences, connections, vas knowledge
of digital marketing and a database of
former clients will be assets to help him
quickly move things around.

techmoran.com/ex-rupu-co-founder-ceo-launches-blissful-an-online-wedding-marketplace/

Well in Ben Maina.

hope the centum board is ready for losses, hii biashara unahitaji ufunge macho ukiungua several times

They’ll are targeting $8B in assets by 2019. Losses come with the territory.

They just need one or two companies to become blackstars, and they will be home and dry

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Do people seriously spend this much time on weddings?

How much did he make when he sold rupu?

Not quite sure, th deal was hush hush though his other cofounder Munyutu went ahead to found Umati Capital

Do these startups actually make a lot of revenue or are the founders just looking for an exit. I see huge spending by these startups on billboards and commercials and ask myself if the ROI justifies the spending. May be they are looking for a buy out by a larger company because I don’t see the revenue being that large for a site like rupu or this new site when the customers can only be found in urban areas and are solidly middle class.
They also never target outside markets even their domain is .ke. Why don’t they look for larger populations like India or China or even the US. The internet should help you connect to many people worldwide not just the tech savvy and well off in urban areas in your country. Inbound marketing works well in the internet. Airbnb works even in Kenya because of inbound marketing. Why can’t we also target the world?
The monetization strategy also looks outdated for an internet company which is trying to grow rapidly. Everyone wants free things, free content, free publicity. This idea of $1 per listing of a company will not generate mind blowing revenue.

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bond maturing in march ya 25b and they have sijui 5b at hand. hio ponzi is sinking. already ceo has resigned and an investor(kanyago I think) has pulled out.

The main exit route for startups in Ke is through buyouts yet to get to a point where startups can IPO successfully and the main reason co such as Uber AirBnB are beating is they have really deep pockets, Uber just raised 1B Usd, now that is a company you cant compete against. But I think with the coming onboard of A list investment firms with deep pockets as defined in the region it gives our startups the chance to atleast scale up to the local EA market which is a plus

You don’t need a lot of money for inbound marketing. What you are selling is a virtual good. Haiishi so what is the reason our startups don’t try to go global. I think that with the internet you can make a name for yourself even if you are in a third world country. Build and then scale up when the numbers grow, ama ni mimi sioni reason ya kutarget only EA when the US companies are even coming to Kenya. If you have a good product that is virtual what will prevent an Indian from using it.

When Jumia were coming to Ke they raised a couple of million Usd to come set up shop here, thats a 100mill plus Kshs. In Ke, that kind of cash goes to buying your company not expanding it to other markets

Can’t you buy from one country and get it shipped? Setting up branches is beating the point of using the internet, which is that you can sell from anywhere to anyone as long as you streamline your supply chain to reduce administration costs otherwise you are just a supermarket which has a website. Amazon doesn’t have branches in every country it sells to.

Amazon have made a profit about once or twice since they were founded, think they are allergic to that word. Their biggest customer base is the US market 300M people in one country, Alibaba 1B people in the same country, we cannot afford that luxury in Africa where only a select few middle class know about you. You need to be physically there to push yourself and make yourself visible

You can be visible on the web. Get people talking about you, use kickstarter, youtube, reddit. All these are new ways that help you become visible, they weren’t around when Amazon and Alibaba were starting and advertising happened on billboards and tv. We have blogs like techcrunch which can highlight your app if it is innovative or solves a real life problem.

There are usually growth pains associated with the kind of growth and going into new markets, Dropbox and Twitter almost collapsed under such growth but they are well capitalized to withstand such shocks, how do you capitalize Ke companies against such?

Lean startup. Ni kitabu ninataka kuanza. But the gist is that you don’t need to burn through exorbitant amounts of money you can grow organically. There is a website highscalability.com which has dozens of articles on how big sites like instagram and twitter scaled up. Also have you seen the rates AWS charge you don’t need to buy new servers. That significantly reduces your costs. The Ubers and Twitters have one problem, they have a high burn rate and are situated in an area with high costs of living. Their employees need to be paid a lot, a junior dev fresh out of college gets $75000-100000. They also have silly expenses. Expansion doesn’t need as much money as you think if we are talking about servers and software. The highest cost is sales and marketing which can be done anywhere especially if you have hype going for you. Did flappy bird have a dedicated team to make it go viral. Have you ever seen a tv ad for angry birds or clash of clans? The old methods of advertising are dead nowadays what helps you out is how you get people taking on the internet and even teenagers are doing that.

Lean Startup by Eric Ries? I agree, softalware is easy to scale up. Markets matter too, American app startups usually have a high adoption rate in the US and with 200+M people using it word will quickly spread round. You see that happening in Ke or Africa?

Yes clash of clans wasn’t made by a US company yet it made it in the US market. You are not using your location to sell anything because it can be accessed from anywhere. Kenyans don’t even have to be the first to adopt it. You can make it attractive to a global audience.