3. Making Money Online with a Specialised App
How Karidas Tshintsholo and Matthew Piper give emerging and micro farmers access to larger markets
Two finance students in their first year at UCT didn’t just dream of becoming entrepreneurs, they wanted to start a business that would solve a real, endemic problem. “We were both studying finance and interested in investing, and the business actually started out as a hobby,” says Karidas.
“We wanted to share what we were learning in class and through our own research with anyone who was interested. We started a website and posted videos and content and shared it with other students.”
Soon, they dropped out of varsity and focused on pivoting their financial literacy business – the result was life-changing. KHULA was born.
Leveraging Specialist Apps to Make Money Online:
With the KHULA farmers App, farmers can list their produce and track inventory levels in real time. The app is designed for emerging farmers as well as basic production forecasting. KHULA includes a crowd-sourcing marketplace for farmers to meet market demand and incoming orders. “We have 104 farmers on the platform, and 26 customers, including Rocomama’s, Munching Mongoose and the Michaelangelo,” says Karidas.
How these entrepreneurs used a Specialised App to Make Money Online:
“The farmers’ app can be downloaded on any phone that has WhatsApp capabilities,” explains Karidas. “Most phones that can be bought for R100 or R200 work, and in our initial research we realised that farmers are pretty tech savvy.” Farmers go to the app store, download the app and sign up. “They then need to provide all their details: Who they are, where they are geolocated, what they grow, and when they expect to harvest different produce,” says Matthew. The team then does a site visit for verification before accepting them onto the platform.
Lessons learnt in establishing an income with a Specialised App Online:
Start by solving a problem. “We didn’t start with an app — we started with an idea,” says Matthew. “We used paper to record everything and called farmers directly to get them onto our books. We had already traded close to R50 000 before we built the app, and by then we had some experience and knew what the app needed to include.”