Ncell App Camp’s Talk Program for 24 Finalists

 

Ncell today organized an interactive talk program introducing international and national speakers to discuss sustainability, marketing and scope of mobile apps, as it aims to facilitate the 24 finalist teams of the ongoing app camp in preparing for the three-day-long final competition that kicked off in Hotel Soaltee today.

The teams will be presenting prototypes of their apps and pitching final ideas with their business models on the final day of the event.

Addressing to the aspiring app developers Tomas Martunas, CEO at App Camp Lithuania and co-founder of Mobofree.com shed light on sustainability of a startup business. In his presentation, Martunas emphasized that the initial three months for any startup, which he calls as ‘death valley’ requires friends, families and fools to help the business survive.

Analyzing the pros and cons of being an entrepreneur, Martunas said that a startup is an unlimited opportunity where the owner has control over everything. “However, there is always a lot of stress, responsibilities and short of time and money, unlike in being an employee where responsibilities are relatively limited and focused.”

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Martunas suggested the App Camp finalists to think of why their potential users would buy their product when there are already million apps in the stores. “Know the demand or create it if there isn’t.”

He advised the participants to make sure their ideas are fine tuned, they communicate in investors’ language and convince the potential investors in numbers on how they plan to make profits. “Do not expect fast results,” said Martunas.

Similarly, highlighting the scope of mobile applications, Tomi Ahonen, leading consultant in mobile, said that every business has been incorporating mobile phones as a communication tool. “Mobile solutions have been creating businesses in farming, fishing and almost every sector,” said Ahonen. “There has never been a technology and an industry like this before.”

Ahonen presented several examples of mobile phones being used as a powerful tool to create businesses worldwide.

Likewise, Karun Thapa, Director of Manaslu Software, discussed pitfalls in mobile apps marketing. Suggesting the developers to research and analyze the competition in the market, Thapa stressed that the new apps should have new features that make the apps standout from the crowd.

On December 2, a independent panel of judges, comprising of three experts from each category, had selected the best 24 teams from among 150 competitors, that were filtered from the total 457 applicants. These 24 teams, six from each category; education, tourism, agriculture and corporate solutions, will be mentored by experts from the related fields to help them finalize their apps and business models.

 

The CEO of Ncell, ErimTaylanlar congratulated the selected teams for working on apps with exciting features.”So far, you all have done an impressive job,” said Taylanlar.

The winners of each categories will receive Rs 250,000 and the overall winner will receive additional Rs 500,000 and a chance to represent Nepal in the International Application Conference in 2015. Meanwhile, all the participating 150 teams of the camp can continue with their projects which later will be included free of cost in the app store that Ncell will create in future.

Six teams that got the highest scores and found way into the finals under Agriculture are Care Crop, Creative Mind, Creatu Developer I, ICT for Agriculture, Saathi and The Revolution. AppsJhola, Cabby, Drupartment, Eagle School Bus, QOD and SentiNep have been selected as finalists under Corporate Solution.

Likewise, MeroAnswer, Group of Innovative Developer, Leazies, Riti-Riwaj, Special Forces and Team Xaverian have been selected as finalists under Education, while HireAGuide, Home Stay Nepal, Nepflights, Team Yellow Nepal, Tourist Talk and Lipi (Script) have their way to the finals under Tourism category.