CapitalSquare Demo Day 2.0

CapitalSquare Demo Day 2.0By Stephanie Dozie on June 13, 2014

Brilliant Light-Bulb Mural by HAM Nigeria

It was a full house at the second edition of CapitalSquare’s Demo Day on Tuesday, 3rd of June, 2014. Demo Day is a platform that puts innovators under the spotlight and provides them the opportunity to meet investors and customers and also get honest, helpful feedback from an audience. Modupe Macaulay, CEO of CapitalSquare made the introductory remarks and thanked everyone for coming. The exhibitors at the event were scheduled to be 1Suite, Naija Workman and Vomingo, but unfortunately, Naija Workman couldn’t make it to the event. The show, however, simply had to go on. The exhibitors had 10 minutes to pitch their business to the audience, after which they’d answer questions from the audience.

The 1Suite Accounting presentation

Uche Aniche of 1Suite Accounting was the first exhibitor to take centre stage with his presentation on the cloud-based accounting platform focused on small businesses. He identified the reason for scarcity of profit in businesses as the inability to track income and expenses. He also said that most of the people who know about accounting use excel and pointed out the challenges of the spreadsheet as time-consuming, unreliable, error prone, lack of in-built quote and invoicing function. Most software, he said, weren’t designed to use Nigerian GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles).

1Suite is optimised to help SMEs capture their accounting needs. Accounting may be the entrepreneur’s least favourite subject, however, you don’t have to know, or even like accounting to use 1Suite, he says. For now, signing up to 1Suite is free but in the future, there’ll be a small fee attached to it. In the future, he hopes that banks will partner with 1Suite, using the platform to pre-qualify prospective SME loan beneficiaries. A member of the audience asked if the app helps set up taxes, to which he answered in the negative. Another had reservations about the security strength of the app and Uche said that for now, it is based on trust – the user trusting the company with their financial details.

He then proceeded to demonstrate how the software works to a captivated audience, showing the easy-to-use feature and saying that you don’t need to have any trace of accounting knowledge to raise an invoice. The 1Suite app also made provision for the Naira sign so that users don’t have to substitute the Naira sign with the dollar sign. With the app, you can change the currency you want to work with. He identified the features of the app as easy-to-use, flexible and customisable set up, and central dashboard for ease of transaction tracking, among others. Business grows, he said, when income is greater than expenditure.The 1Suite Accounting presentation over, the guests converged in the meeting room for light refreshments and chit-chat session.

Guests at break time

After the break, Ada Stephanie Chukwudozie of IN3K8 Media – the official media sponsor of the event – provided a brief overview about the company and the new partnership with CapitalSquare. The exhibitors were awarded a week worth of free advertising on all screens in the 13 locations across Lagos, as a key benefit of the partnership.

Alex Ayankoya of Vomingo

The Vomingo demo was up next as the very animated representative, Alex Ayankoya, took the floor. He guaranteed the audience that by the end of the session, they’d want to use the telecom service. It was not an empty promise. The audience seemed really impressed throughout the presentation; it was highly engaging and interactive as they volunteered during the course of the presentation. Alex pointed out that company image is everything and with voice prompts, provision made for the addition of multiple local, international, and extension numbers, Vomingo gives your business a professional face-lift.

The service can be used on both analogue and digital phones, and a business can have up to 100 extension numbers per number. To make calls using Vomingo is absolutely free but reception costs only N1600 per month, he said, likening the cost to that of the average Blackberry subscription. He identified the unique feature of Vomingo as the Voice-blast/broadcast feature, which enables the user to record a voice message and send it as a call to multiple numbers.

You can also schedule calls with this service. For business people traveling out of the country, there is no need to roam. “Calling-card is a disease and Vomingo is the cure”, he said. Alex expressed that with Vomingo, a one-man business can organise itself and come off sounding like a multi-national. Many companies are cloud-based, he said, a startup entrepreneur and the staff can be at various locations at the same time but still sound as professional as a Fortune 500 company. He then proceeded to show the audience how to set up a Vomingo account and how it works. Members of the audience volunteered their phone numbers while he demonstrated how to send voice-blasts/broadcast.

After the presentation, Modupe thanked all the guests for coming. The turn-out was very impressive and the event was a success.

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