Founded by the young entrepreneur Aymard Bamal, ShoOwer is the startup that has set itself the mission of simplifying your daily life thanks to a unique geolocation service. Indeed, with your smartphone, ShoOwer not only allows you to find routes to your destinations, but also to detect job offers and sales around you. The service goes further and helps you never lose sight of your loved ones thanks to its real-time location functionality. This increasingly popular application took 3rd place at the end of the Apps Africa Innovation Awards which took place in Cape Town, South Africa last November, a ceremony rewarding the best African innovation. The young company based in Douala is making its way and aims to become a leader in its field in Africa.
To have ShoOwer “shoow” * what’s around you, all you need is a smartphone with the Android operating system. Access to the service is free for the first year and costs 2,000 Fcfa per year from the following year. “Classic” phone users can also access the service via SMS, although they cannot use features such as photo sharing on the ShoOwer social network. These are then debited from 50 Fcfa per SMS sent.
We had the opportunity to exchange with the promoter of the startup, this Engineer graduated from the Faculty of Industrial Engineering of the University of Douala who is working today with his team to continue the development and expansion of the service .
Inspire Afrika: How many users does the platform have today?
Aymard Bamal: To date, the application has approximately 6,900 users, including approximately 1,000 daily users.
What motivated you to create shoOwer?
I wanted to create a “geolocator” for everything. You know, people already have their habits to find their bearings but the observation that I made is the following: The GPS is not really active at home in Africa and in addition, given the high cost of the connection to the internet and its low penetration rate, so I thought of designing a tool that would allow us to find any place, with internet, without internet, with GPS, without GPS.
Tell us about the Apps Africa Innovation Awards.
Yes, the Apps Africa Innovation Awards is an African competition where mobile or web applications compete by category.
ShoOwer was nominated among the 6 best African mobile innovations and declared 3rd best African innovation at the grand finale which took place in Cape Town in South Africa last November.
Where do you see ShoOwer in the coming years?
In the coming years, we plan to launch the application in Gabon and then in Nigeria, the starting point for the conquest of Africa. The goal is to become the benchmark for geolocated mobile / web directories in Africa.
What is your biggest dream ?
My biggest dream is an African investment fund for Africans, in order to evaluate and finance the projects of young Africans, because we are full of talents and sometimes discrimination and corruption put black ink on these white sheets.
* (term meaning to show in local English)
Source: http://inspireafrika.com/fr/shoower-lapplication-mobile-camerounaise-qui-change-vos-habitudes/?platform=hootsuite
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