‘Connected Kenya‘ Summit , a landmark event on Kenya’s educational horizon celebrates Kenyans who have developed ICT Solutions that drive economic growth and social development in Kenya’s “Vision 2030” . iridiumInteractive stole the limelight by bagging one of the Nation’s top innovation awards. These awards were jointly given by the Kenya ICT Board and the Kenya Vision 2030. All the applicants to the awards were required to be registered as a business in Kenya and it was mandatory to have had their products in the Kenyan Market for at least six months. There were 400 applications for various categories from all over the country . The competition was tough and the applications were reviewed by a high ranking team of independent judges, who represented the ICT private sector, academia, public sector and civil society.

iridiumInteractive won the award in the most hotly contested category of the “Best Innovation in the Education and Training Sector”. Sriram Bharatham, CEO and Founder accepted the award. Speaking on this occasion, Sriram Bharatam (Sri) said, “This recognition is a testimony that we are in the right direction and is a great motivator to the 50+ team members at iridiumInteractive across 20 locations in Kenya, to now scale this idea and reach out to transform as many Kenyan small business owners as possible.”

An enriching experience for the team, a giant leap forward towards reaching their goal.

Just a few days old at iridium (Delhi office), I was put in the team to work on this project. We were given a flat 15 days to get the new design and the entire back-end implemented, but kudos to our technical team (also consisting of new joinees) for getting the portal up and running. This year we also ensured active customer support (making sure that we answer each and every query) and extended it to social media (via Facebook); additionally we also used the fan page to generate buzz.

The project received a tremendous response of 40,000 business plans got submitted on the website.

The project exposed me to the absolute vastness in terms of budget, impact, brand awareness and connect and the impact such an activity could have. There was a lot of cross functional synergy required, a lot of fire-fighting (at times), a lot of unlearning and learning and hard work and all of this was worth when our team got the chance to attend the Grand Finale and to watch the participants we have interacted with/supported/helped deliver those business plan presentations. It was like reliving the entire 4-5 months of working on the project.

And then came the big one, the announcement of the Grand Finale winner! It was a great feeling for us to have helped someone to win a brand new WagonR and Rs 10 Lakhs.

In the photograph, this is our team with Ms. Aparna Bhatnagar (winner of the WagonR Think Big Challenge).

Not to forget we (our team) got a chance to meet Madhavan (aka Manu of Tanu weds Manu) and we even got a photograph clicked with him ☺

Overall it’s been a kick ass experience and we are already looking forward to its next edition.

MPs checking their constituency data with Juliet Gateri, Business Manager of iridium Kenya

Taking governance online

iridium has conceptualized, designed and developed the Innovative ESP Monitoring & Reporting platform and portal in a record 6 weeks time.The website is a critical component of Kenya’s Economic Stimulus Program functioning as a framework to monitor, evaluate and report on the progress of the ESP projects. The objective of Kenya’s Economic Stimulus Program is to jumpstart Kenya’s economy through investments in long term solutions to better Kenya’s economic situation. The ESP focuses on empowering Kenyans with education, provide employment and entrepreneurial opportunities and promote regional development. The website covers all aspects of the program dealing with Government interventions in Education, Public health, Food, Water, Irrigation, Fresh Produce Markets, Fisheries and Industrialization. The website thus allows visitors to track the usage of resources and understand what the Government is doing to overcome the recession’s effects and the impact of these efforts on Kenya.

Uhuru Kenyatta declaring the Kenya ESP website 'Live'

iridium has worked closely with the Kenyan ESP team to deliver a website that not only covers all these aspects but provides viewers an easy to use interface by which they can understand the Government’s efforts and leverage the opportunities presented. The ESP website and GIS system have been designed as a system that promotes openness, objectivity, transparency and efficiency. By combining these with other aspects of the internet, the ESP portal provides the Kenyan Government a potent tool to communicate with citizens and deliver better governance. The innovative system drills down to constituency and project levels and allows citizens to know all the projects that are underway and on the anvil. It allows visitors to assess the impact of the measures, gives them the contact co-ordinates of the legislators from their constituencies and arms them with the information to know how effective their leaders are. The ESP website thus creates an ecosystem of accountability and transparency by keeping every stakeholder, from citizens to public servants, in the loop of communication. By combining the tool with social networking and other real time communication tools, the ESP website also helps foster communication and informs people about opportunities for growth, entrepreneurship and learning.

Deputy Prime Minister of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, reviewing the portal with Sriram Bharatam

I personally believe that the usage of technologies such as GIS mapping and collaborative tools to increase the reach of this information will go a long way in helping deliver better governance. It takes considerable effort to collect data about developmental projects being performed across a country and presenting them in an easy to use interface that can help citizens understand what their Government is doing for them. The pathbreaking work done by the Kenyan Government in shaking off the shackles of the recession are laudable and even more so is their spirit in engaging iridium Interactive and Google Kenya to develop a tool that lets any of Kenya’s 39 million citizens to monitor the progress of the stimulus program and thus improves accountability and transparency.
The Economic Stimulus Programme website was declared Live by Uhuru Kenyatta a few hours ago and we are proud to be associated with the Government of Kenya in this pioneering venture.

The launch was covered extensively by the Kenyan press who believe the tool could definitely have a positive impact on monitoring the status of Kenya’s Economic Stimulus Programme.

You can read the coverage in:

1. Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation
2. Standard Media
3. Business Daily Africa
4. Daily Nation
5. Capital FM

Objective

For some time now, iridium has been providing services to a host of clients, offering innovative solutions in the online domain. We have simplified their work processes, brought people of an organization together, and attracted new prospects for their clients. In the midst of all this work, we suddenly realized that we had been short-ending ourselves – we lacked a similar platform ourselves. ii needed a common forum for all ii employees: to voice their thoughts and opinions, access the information they need, download sales presentations, report a technical problem, or even just wish the boss on his birthday. And truly reflecting the work ethic here, iridiumites wanted a platform that was easy to use and at the same time, fun as well. As the Editor Janhavi puts it very aptly, “An out-of-the-box interactive agency and no common platform to know our people, our teams, except for work… Imagine!! Solution???? What better than a platform like the intranet to bridge this gap? We Iridiumites need a common platform to know ‘US the company’ and the employees who make ‘US’. Sharing experiences, tickling a funny bone sometimes, exploring places with colleagues and training programs to gear up for the upward curve …”

Solution

People Tree was born with the aim of creating an efficient communication channel, both to and between staff, supporting ongoing organizational improvement and increasing knowledge flow within the organization. The top management outlined the philosophy for the intranet thus: PeopleTree, associated with truth, vision and clairvoyance, is aimed at providing the employees a better insight and transparent overview of the happenings in the organization.In forming PeopleTree, all major stakeholders – administration, HR, staff, as well as top management were actively involved in identifying the core requirements and general needs and implementing them to perfection. A lot of thought, discussions, and the inevitable arguments went into deciding a site structure, navigation, and home page design that would be appealing and acceptable to all.

Results

Eventually PeopleTree has became an innovative, Internet-based service that can be accessed from anywhere through a standard web-browser. It has been launched with a lot of interactive, interesting, informative and time-saving features like the IT helpdesk to quickly deliver technical assistance, resource booking to block the conference room for team meetings, video trainings to quench the thirst for knowledge, HR & Admin to simplify the dreaded paperwork, and much more. We plan to incrementally broaden the scope of PeopleTree to encompass more and more interactive services that will streamline business processes and reduce the time employees spend on routine, paper-based tasks.

About ii
iridium Interactive Limited (ii) specializes in providing online business solutions. With a presence across three continents, it has been at the forefront in integrating strategy, design and technology to build unique and robust user-centric e-business solutions. At ii, a holistic approach is adopted towards complex business problems to arrive at a complete solution. ii’s talented team has worked on a variety of disciplines for a multitude of clients drawn from various industries, and has a number of award-winning works to its credit. ii offers it services in the areas of interactive marketing, web marketing, e-learning, enterprise consulting and web accessibility initiatives.