AfrikaTech went to meet Emerson Pain, Kubina’s CEO. Kubina is an Angolan company specializing in transport. The peer to peer carpool service company has won the startup competition for emerging countries, Seedstars for Angola. Find our interview with its CEO.
Introduce yourself and your journey
My name is Emerson Paim, age 39 and I have started my journey when I was 16th years old. By the time I was in an internship working experience with Rádio 5 (National Sports Rádio Station), at same time I was studying Technical Mechanical course at IMIL, ( Makarenco). I am also a Drop out Student from East London University where I was studying Civil Engineering. Worked at Hilton London Canary Wharf as Guest Relations Manager, KBR as Structural Designer Technician and to resume the full story, I am the CEO of KUBINGA, a peer-to-peer application for ride-hailing and delivery services.
What is your project and its mission?
Our mission is to use technology to promote mobility, integration of the informal market to achieve sustainable economic growth.
We are very committed to be part of the solution for some problems and we have created KUBINGA with a mission to provide accessibility for save, more economic, high quality and formal services. We are enablers of mobility among other services we own in our pipeline.
How did you get the idea to start your business?
We have Started Kubinga idea in October 2017 in a random conversation between Darryl Nequetela ( Founder ) and Alan Santos (Co-Founder), discussing the mobility problems we face every day in Luanda among all other constrains (unemployment, expensive taxi services, informality on travel business, inexistence of tax contribution of the sector). I had a small office in the city, on a street where we find the most dense concentration of informal ride services and that gave us the advantage to start building our Eco-system.
Can you introduce your team?
I am very honoured to work with Darryl Nequetela (IT Engº); Alan Santos (IT Engº); Amândio Feijó ( Automotive Engº); N´Silu Ferreira (IT Engº), Alcibiades Kussumua (Electromechanical Engº) and Rafael Kapose (Trade Finance Expert)
What is the problem solved by Kubinga?
We are working on few problems but let me divide into two aspects.
On one hand, we integrate unemployed persons to drive third party cars and provide ride-hailing services. By doing so and due to the low IT literacy existent in our communities, we provide training on how to use the application, customer care skills and safety drive instruction. Basically we provide training to grant accessibility. On the other hand, we provide a platform for agents to gain advantage of they passives by integrating their cars in our Eco-system / Applications so they can provide Rides. We also interact with formal institutions like banks, car shops, insurance companies to grant the necessary bridge to promote economic growth to all stakeholders.
What is your business model?
For every single ride given, we take 25% of the payment for KUBINGA´s commission and offer the other 75% to the car Owner / Agent. KUBINGA is responsible for maintaining the platform online, accounting and ride reports. Agents are responsible for maintaining their vehicles on great cleaning and mechanical conditions, and provide ride services.
What are the next steps?
We are currently working on KUBINGA 2.0 version, to provide a simplistic user experience, and to add capabilities for more services that we have planned in our road map. We will launch version 2.0 in May, with our delivery services that we undergo in test mode for more than 5 months.
What do you need and how can Seedstars / AfrikaTech help you?
Your network, and Know How are the most valuable assets we would like have access. We are seeking for investment to expand the next stage of KUBINGA and we are keen to have your help on that.
What are the contacts of the startup? Website, email, Mobile / WhatsApp, links to social networks?
epaim@ubinga.com
Mobile: +244 936 929 007
WhatsApp: +244 948 802 882
www.kubinga.com
https://www.facebook.com/kubingaLda/
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