Featured Submissions: Level 2

At the end of each Level of #AGEC19_KE, the Team reviews some of the highest scoring challenge submissions for each challenge and hand-picks a stand-out submission to feature. Here are the featured submissions from Level 2.

A summary of our Best Submissions from learners who competed in Level 2.

CHALLENGE 13

Winner: Yasha Zorro – Apostolic Carmel Girls’ Secondary

The Challenge + Response (Summary)

Visit a local business and assess to what extent they use data in making decisions. Describe in 2 short sentences exactly what the business does.

This business is a business that deals with offering serving in fast food so their target is the hungry people in their area.

Ask them the following questions:

• What is the biggest business decisions you’ve made in the past month?
• Why did you make the choice you made?

Describe their answers for each of the 2 questions above.

They went around asking people whether there was anything they could do to improve their services. They got a lot of answers and the biggest response was that they should improve their staff, some of whom were careless and inefficient.

They had a week of observing the people and tracking data on their performance, and then they chose the ones who couldn’t keep up with their job to leave. This resulted in better overall service and increased revenues.

Now ask them whether they use data to help with decision making.

If they do use data to make decisions, you should describe for which decisions they use data, as well as what data they look at when making those decisions.

They use data to analysis their business, for example they had a drastic drop in profit how did they know this they always asses themselves every week to see their problems.

They have a strategy they call PPP (plans problems and progress) every week they collect this data from their customers, employees and then come up with a table to show what to do next.

If there’s is progress, they keep on working on it more to bring out the beauty in it, but if it is a problem they again use data collected from customers to see and solve the problem.

CHALLENGE 14: Resources Everywhere

Winner: Yasha Zorro – Apostolic Carmel Girls’ Secondary

The Challenge + Response (Summary)

“With your friend, take a walk around school and identify a resource that is being thrown away or underutilized. In a short paragraph or bullet points, propose one way you could create value from this resource. “

Our school gym was being underutilized and was left like a dirty abandoned house, with no equipment in it since the school auctioned all the equipment to raise money to build more classes.

The gym could be made useful again by repainting it and fixing its lighting system. After that it should be partitioned into three due to its large size.

One of the rooms can be used as a counselling room for students where they go and get help emotionally, physically or spiritually. The second one should be used as a store for the playing equipment of students playing football and badminton. The last one should be used as a store for lost and found items.

Now approach someone in the environment you have identified and validate some of your assumptions in question 1 above.

As you interview your interviewee be sure to use these questions to guide feedback:

• Validate the problem you envisioned is indeed faced by your interviewee.
• What other material could be used to make the solution better?

Describe what you learned from these conversations.

I approached the teacher in charge of quality and assurance and he confirmed to me that indeed the gym was abandoned due to its dirty looking nature and because it was at the furthest corner of the school.

A few renovations on the gym would give it a new face. The gym could be made to be more resourceful by repainting it to conceal all the many writings on its wall and the dirt patches.

CHALLENGE 15: The Business Model

Winner: Faith Aggie – Moi Tea Girls’ Secondary

The Challenge + Response (Summary)

Describe in 1 short paragraph what problem your business is solving, for who, and how.

Event organizers have always had a challenge in that they had to spend a lot of resources on advertising on posters, television, radio and YouTube yet people rarely pay attention to them. Our app will list all of the hottest events taking place in each area. The app users will be able to stay up to date with what’s happening at a very cheap price. Event organizers can easily reach a big audience with just 1 posting.

Describe what revenue model will work best for your business.

(Things to consider when choosing a revenue model)

The CATCH APP will be dealing with two kind of customers that is the viewer of the app and the advertiser.

On the advertiser side we will use the monthly subscription revenue model. This is because we will need to prevent congestion of our systems with outdated adverts. And we do find the need to remain up-to date by discarding the old adverts.

For the consumer we will use the one-time purchase system. They pay when the app is downloaded, and the user only needs small data bundles to update the adverts and to buy the tickets. Payments can be made via M-Pesa or credit cards.

CHALLENGE 16: Pricing

Winner: Rebecca Daisy – Waa Girls Secondary school

The Challenge + Response (Summary)

Describe in 1 short paragraph what problem your business is solving, for who, and how.

My business is solving the problem of irritation caused by chemicals on hands after finishing washing or using commercial soap that are made using harmful chemicals. We make Homemade natural soap that is free from chemicals and nourishes and heals your skin, leaving it soft and smooth.

Describe in 1 short paragraph the revenue model you chose in challenge 15.

We use a simple mark-up on cost revenue model because it is simple and easy to track. As the saying goes old is gold. I chose it because it will help me calculate my profits and progress very easily.

Pricing Time!

Some key considerations when determining your prices:…

Describe your pricing strategy. More importantly, describe why you choose to price your product in this way.

My pricing strategy is the penetration strategy. That is to set a low price to enter a competitive market and then raise it later. Homemade natural soap is facing high competition with the commercial soaps. I have chosen it because it is price lowered since it does not require much marketing, is simple to make, and does not require a lot of labour.

CHALLENGE 17

Winner: Sharon Chege – Apostolic Carmel Girls Secondary School

The Challenge + Response (Summary)

Describe a few daily behaviours that you think would:

• serve as good indicators of how likely someone is to repay a loan. AND
• be easy enough for banks to gather data on. AND
• allow poorer Kenyans greater access to housing loans.

Kenyans would actually be able to repay their loans when they do daily savings. Daily savings in that they raise at least 10% from their daily earnings and sum it all up at the end of the month so as to repay their loans. Some loans could also be repaid by loan forgiveness. This is to mean that one is exempted from paying their loan in exchange for doing a certain community service equal to the amount that they were lent. Banks can be able to gather information from people through weekly surveys of the organisations in which they work. This is because most people in the country who are employed by standard rated companies usually have their data in the company’s system which is updated from time to time. Another possible way could be through chatbots. This is an easy friendly way of conversing with one’s customers from wherever they are. This is because the data that one receives from their customers is automated, asynchronous and more human. Loans can be easily affordable to poorer Kenyans by offering less interest rates on the charges of the actual loans. This can also be implemented by offering some job opportunities to the poorer kenyans so as to make them get some money so that they could actually acquire some loans even with high interest charges.

What is your view on data collection and personal privacy? Do think that we should keep collecting data as long as it keeps improving our lives? Or do you think there is a limit to how much of our personal information should be out there in the world?

Concerning privacy in this world’s digital age, I actually do care about the importance of control over my personal information and freedom from surveillance in my daily life. One should be deeply particular concerning who collects this data from their lives and how useful it is. The issue of who is gathering information and what the information is being used for is the first step to acknowledging that we all should have limits to the type of data being acquired from us. Personally, I think that the government in our country Kenya should add more security measures towards citizens data related information, so as to ensure that more citizens are able to give out the required information when asked to portray their personal information. Following latest hacks concerning the government websites, the government should implement more ways to securing data so that the citizens could actually have some faith when giving out their information.

CHALLENGE 18

Winner: Roxanne Okeke – Apostolic Carmel Girls Secondary School

The Challenge + Response (Summary)

Identify one opportunity from the resources provided above that you could utilize. In a short paragraph describe why this particular opportunity appeals to you the most.

The most appealing platform for me was MiT Open Course Ware. This is because it has a very user friendly and a very navigable system hence making it easy for me, a beginner to find whatever am looking for. Also ,They offer free learning materials, lecture notes, problem sets and solutions, exams, reading lists, and event video lectures this is advantageous to me since unlike in other platforms, I will not have to pay hence my reading will not only be limited to when I have money. They also provide offline reading and saving hence I can share the learning materials with my friends and I can read at anytime even without data bundles.

Approach a friend at your school who is going to be finishing high school this year. Ask them what they are planning to do after school. Your challenge is to find him/her an opportunity through which they can pursue their dream. In a short paragraph, describe how the discussion went. You should answer these questions:

• What opportunity did you recommend and why?
• How will you help push them to take up the opportunity?

My friend Mercy intends to join Zalego institute of Software Development to learn more about web developing and becoming a web developer. I recommended that she join Udemy to achieve her dream. She wanted an institution were she would receive learning resources on her laptop and she would not have to go to the school physically. She also wanted to have course at a very affordable price and that she would be able to refer to the learning materials in the future. She wanted to be taught by experts so that she would become the best in the field. I immediately recommended she take up courses from Udemy since they had expert lecturers and provided all she was looking for wants and more. She would spend less than she would if she joined the institution she wanted and would have lifelong access to her learning materials for future reference needs. I advised her to download the app and sign up. Purchase the reading materials and read on to be a web developer.

CHALLENGE 19

Winner: Jabriil Nor – Mustard seed International Schools

The Challenge + Response (Summary)

Describe in 1 short paragraph the revenue and pricing models you chose in challenge 15 & 16. Within the paragraph explain why you chose this particular revenue model.

My business is trying to solve the problem of stress filled lives of busy parents or guardians on a daily basis:

• If parents are unable to cook for their kids on time when they get home, and
• If you are hosting a party and need help in cooking, cleaning and the daily chores. My business is dedicated to fixing these problems. In Challenge 15 I said I would be starting with an ad based revenue model and when business costs or customers start increasing I would switch to a subscription-based revenue model that would be efficiently useful in my business and that would be incorporated into the app.

Describe 2 changes/improvements you can make to your business model that will increase the amount of value your business derives from each customer (your CLV).

The subscription-based revenue model would be useful in monthly or annually subscriptions and in case of me being worried about profits, my app will calculate the percentage rate of recurring revenue and how to increase more profit incorporated in the app. I think maybe not starting with the ad based model would improve in profit because my business is looking for loyal and recurring customers. The second change is maybe routing to additional revenue opportunities, my cooking business maybe could charge extra on holidays and bigger events that include many people thereby taking more time and energy of the employees. I conclude that the business route should take the company steady up into profits and increase in customer list.

CHALLENGE 20

Winner: Baroness Wanjala – Moi Girls’ High School-Eldoret

The Challenge + Response (Summary)

Describe in 1 short paragraph what problem your business is solving, for who, and how.

My business is solving a problem- environmental degradation to save the society from pollution. This would be achieved by using the available and sufficient resources- making use of the reusable products and recycling waste products into more affordable and useful products for the society.

In the previous challenges you’ve done quite a lot of groundwork on what your product and business could look like. Use the assumptions you’ve made in previous challenges, along with the formula above, to predict your COCA for 1 week.

Sales of the week=sh 107000 Marketing expenses for the week=sh 40000 Number of new customers acquired=23 customers Hourly rate= sh 875 per hour. COCA=[sales & marketing expenses]/No of new customers COCA =[107000+40000]/23 COCA= 147000/23 COCA=Sh. 6391.30.

What 1 thing could you do/change in order to dramatically decrease your COCA? Why do you think this is the most effective way to decrease your COCA?

I would change the word of mouth process into marketing by use of a good website and social media set up. I chose this way since it would cover a large and wider area than the word of mouth concept. It would also attract more customers and reduce COCA value. I won’t have to employ sales agents to market the product for the business.