INTERVIEW: ChapChap App Innovator Reveals How It Benefits Entrepreneurs

In 2015, an analysis by Approved Index revealed that Uganda was the most entrepreneurial country in the world.

The analysis noted that the East African country has the planet’s highest proportion of people who have started businesses.  The research shows that 28 per cent of its adult population started businesses in the last 42 months, which is almost twice as high as any other country in the world.

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) also a few years ago ranked Uganda as the most enterprising country in the world. It said 28% of adults in Uganda own or co-own a new business. However, the same survey revealed high failure rates of business start-ups.

Additionally, several reports have revealed that many Ugandan start-up businesses do not live to celebrate their first anniversary.

However, the ChapChap App will go a long way in helping entrepreneurs manage better their businesses at a low cost.

Emmanuel Emodek (EE), the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of ChapChap Africa, an organization developing low cost innovative digital solutions says ChapChap App should be embraced by every entrepreneur for sustainable growth of their businesses.

Business Focus (BF) caught up with him to explain more about the wonder App and how it benefits entrepreneurs. Below are the excerpts of the interview;

BF: What’s Chap Chap Africa all about?

EE: ChapChap Africa is an organization that started in Uganda and prides itself in developing low cost innovative digital solutions that enable our people to easily access financial services as well as helping entrepreneurs in making informed decisions on how improve and manage their businesses.

BF:  What prompted you to come up with this innovation?

EE: A team of friends that included software developers identified a need of bringing financial services closer to the undeserved members of their communities. It was this dream that set us on the journey to create and innovate digital solutions that would seek to serve our communities in an easy and better way.

BF: Tell me more about ChapChap Point of Sale? 

EE: It’s an application that will help our communities especially people in the informal sector and small businesses to make smarter business decisions that will increase their chances of making more revenue and increase their chances of survival based on the fact that information collected by the application will effectively make running and managing businesses easy.

BF: What are the main benefits of this application to entrepreneurs/ the business community?

EE: Our solution helps entrepreneurs in our communities to efficiently monitor their businesses especially for those who are not always around to run their businesses or for many that can’t afford to hire people like accountants. The application will also help businesses in our communities to bring services like payment of bills and airtime closer to the underserved.

BF: What does it take for a business person to use the application?

EE: Simply visit Google play store download the ChapChap merchant application. The application can be used on both phone and desktop version.

BF: How has the market responded to the app so far?

EE: We have over one thousand subscribers so far and the market is excited about the product especially those that appreciate what a point of sale does. We are actually getting a lot of calls from people who can’t believe you can actually have a point of sale on your phone.

Those that have used it really appreciate its usefulness in helping them manage their businesses better.

BF: What key challenges are developers like ChapChap facing?

EE: It’s costly to develop an application of this magnitude and equally challenging to be able to bring to the market (declines to reveal amount invested).

There are so many challenges and sacrifices incurred including funding and having the right human resource. That said, despite these challenges, we never lose hope and are driven on by our ultimate goal of bringing digital services closer to our community to improve their quality of life and businesses.

 BF: Your last word…

EE: With our strategic partners SNV, we hope to help the undeserved access financial services easily through piggy banking on the mobile phone.

We also would like to help and see small businesses join the digital revolution and enjoy the economies of scale like reduced costs of serving customers that come with digitizing businesses hence ensuring their survival beyond their first year of business.