By Our Reporter
Uganda Breweries Limited (UBL) has announced the winners in their creative hackathon where they sought eCommerce solutions, whose need has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, to boost business performance.
The winners were announced on Saturday during an award ceremony held at Mfano Design Lab in Muyenga to mark the end of the challenge which had been running for three days.
“At UBL, we wanted to invite as many young creative minds to participate and contribute to developing smart strategies to how we can overcome some of the challenges that have been brought around by the Covid-19 pandemic.” Said Agaba Tumusiime, the Brand Manager Mainstream Spirits at UBL.
“We received dozens of entries and our panel judges narrowed them down to five teams, each which a very unique value proposition that was well communicated and seemed to be fitting with what our strategic goal was to help drive sales performance as a FMCG business.” He added.
“Local” emerged winners of the hackathon, receiving a Ugx 10 million cash prize and a six-month mentorship with UBL.
According to Geofrey Mutabazi, the team lead, Local is a logistics platform that solves the end-to-end distribution problem by offering ordering, stocking, delivery and customer care services.
“Local is an outstanding innovation which is going to help us improve accessibility and efficiency with which we deliver our products to the end consumer.” Agaba noted.
In the second position was Onduka, an Artificial Intelligence-powered chatbot that allows business owners to interact with customers.
A 2019 report by UCC indicated that Uganda’s internet penetration stands at 37.9% with over 23 million internet users. This was largely attributed to increased penetration of mobile phones in the country which stands at over 20 million subscribers. As such, businesses need to utilize digital avenues to boost growth and performance.
“We are happy to contribute to the growth and development of young entrepreneurial minds in this country and this is not the last time you will see us involved in something like this. Through these creative hackathons, we will continue to motivate and inspire the youth of Uganda to be bold and develop those innovations and creative ideas.” Agaba Tumusiime concluded.