 But yes, we are back with Entrepreneurship Tuesday on why in the morning I go by the name of Barry Moses or it's Barry Mo on every social media platform. So White 54 channel is our handle on Twitter, White 54, underscore channel on Instagram, and White 54 on Facebook. Be sure to leave the hashtags why in the morning and Entrepreneurship Tuesdays if you'd like to interact with us. So my first guest of the day goes by the name Ghashiri Waweru and Ghashiri Waweru is a software engineer and founder of Ndoño Online, a Kenyan Ecomass platform that offers business space and marketing support to prosper online. Karibusana Mr. Ghashiri Waweru. Nice to meet you, man. All right, your camera is number four. If you need to address the people, just look at them straight into the eyes. And sometimes you'll be talking to me, but for now I'd like you to talk to me. And you've had an experience of 10 years in this. That's the science thing. And do you feel like you know the secret for businesses to prosper online? Yes, sure. Wonderful. You'll be telling us more about this. But before that, I'd like to know, when was the first time you ever interacted with the computer? So my first interaction with the computer was in 2007. I joined high school. And then this was a Lance boys' high school. Yes. How many marks did you score in primary school? In primary school, 432. 432? Yes. Did you study Nairobi? No. Where? Back in Kerugoya and that's in Kerinaga. That is in Kerinaga County? Yes. Okinawaiguru. Kerinaga County represented on the morning, be sure. All right, so 432, studying in Kerinaga. Then you went to a Lance boys' high school. Yeah. How was it like getting to a national school with all these people who scored 430 something months? So getting to a national school, for me, it's something that I didn't know I would make it. But then when I got there, it was actually an eye-opener for me. Yes, so the whole experience was an eye-opener. You thought you were a smart guy until you got there? Yeah. Your eyes got open? Yeah, sure. All right, so this is where you interacted with your first computer. You were in Form 1, you interacted with the computer. What did you think about this device? So for me, I was fascinated. It was the first time I was actually using a computer. Actually, I never even used a phone. So when I got in there, I was excited to see what this just... Box could do. Then it was those computers, the CRT ones. I was fascinated. With a very big back? Yes, with a big back. And I could see what this box could do and I was fascinated. And then I spent most of my time in the computer lab. You spent most of your time in the computer. You never got in trouble for this? No, actually, there was provision for if you wanted to do it. You could actually... All these break times, last time maybe, most of my time was spent there when I learnt, like... Yes, so I got fascinated and I wanted to... From that day you've fallen in love with the computer and now you're making your money off a computer as well. So you get done with the Lance Boys High School. You go to J-Quach, right? You study computer science. All right, how was it like getting to first year? Was it what you expected? Because when you were in high school, you really learned the basics of computing for four years. It's the basics of computing, if you ask me. And when you get to campus, for me, I got shocked when I got to interact with the type of physics I interacted with in campus. How was that for you? So for me, just before I went to campus, I went to a college called Digital Engineering Institute. For a higher diploma in software engineering, I didn't get to finish the course because it was the introduction of the double intake. You were the first class of the double intake. Oh, okay, that is 2012, yeah. 2012, so I didn't finish my software engineering classes. But when I got there, I had some ideas of what to expect. Aha, when you got to first year. Yes, when we got to first year. But even then, I was shocked because of the things we went to do now because as it was not a practice, it was a science. So we went actually into the depths of computer science. Of computer science. All right, we're living in the information age. Everything is online. There's Code Academy online. You can learn to code from home. Where, which is your biggest source of knowledge is it now? Is it campus or is it the internet? Things you've taught yourself. It has to be the internet. It has to be the internet. Yes, it's the internet, yes. So you've learnt a lot from the internet. From the internet, yes. Maybe you can break down for us. What is data science? So for data science, it's making, first you have to get the data. And then you have to make sense. It's making sense of data. And in this case, we are talking about a huge amount of data and trying to get some insights from the same. Yes, so maybe I could better use an example. So if you have maybe people who come to shop online, then you can find a group. There's a certain group of people who shop specific items. So when a certain demographic comes in, they tend to, maybe even the way they click, you can say, this guy belongs to this group. It may be age, or even they are. So the moment I get into, say, your site. Your site is called? Dhonyo Online. Dhonyo Online, all right. So I get to your site and I'm like, I want to do some shopping. The first click I make can tell you the type of person I am. Yes, yes. We are being spied on, man. We are being spied on. It's not actually spying. We are using this information to your advantage. Sometimes we save people a lot of time. You are looking for something and you also want another item. So it's likely that when you click that item, you also know you need another item. And you help you. Because the occurrence of somebody clicking this and then needing the other item after has happened so many times. It has happened so many times. And then we are likely to know what you want. We anticipate your needs. And sometimes it helps a lot of people because you see people creating a wish list. And most likely they'll come back and buy the same. All right. So this is data science for you. Just getting to understand what data is. So there are three steps to it. Collection of data, analysis of data, and using it now, concluding it. Yes. So just exactly as you mentioned, you collect the data. In between the analysis, we first clean it just to remove noise and bits which might not be available. So data has noises. Or this is just to refer to the necessary data. Yes, to the unnecessary items you need to get rid of. Then we come to the analysis. But the most important part is not, with all these parties, actually making a decision. Making a decision. Because you could make your analysis and come up with the wrong conclusion. But now, when you make your analysis, you need a human to come and say, at most part you need a human being to come and say, now this is what this means. So that's the most important. A robot will never do that thing. It can't do that because now we have machine learning models, but we have to teach them. As far as your intelligence as well. But they have to be taught by a human. Yes, we have to teach them. When you see this, you can conclude this. So you have to teach them that. All right. Data analysis. This is data analysis in computing. Is there, in day to day life, do you see cases of data analysis and some things that we don't even realize? We have analyzed data, and we are using it to our advantage. But we never even realize. Is there a case like that? In fact, even ask how you think, especially as humans, all the time we incorporate previous data in all our decision making. Even subconsciously. Even subconsciously. For example, if a kid touches fire. That's a very good example. The next time when the kid sees fire, they are likely not touch it. That has been analyzed. That has, yeah, it's experienced. So for now it's like data is what computers are most likely to use to start their experience. But as human beings, yes, we have the same. We have the capacity to analyze data. We might not have the capacity to store as much as a hard disk or a server. But we have the ability to analyze data and use it to our advantage. Some people might be better at it. Some people might be a little bit low in it. But we all have the capacity. This information right here, this is something you learned in school while studying computer science. This has led you to building Ndonyong Online. What is Ndonyong Online? So Ndonyong Online is a platform where you can easily get an online shop. We market for you. And we also handle all payments. So such that all you need to do is grow your business. You are the CEO and founder? Yes. How old are you again? So 26. You're 26? Yeah. Wow. Carry on. This happens in Silicon Valley a lot, yeah. So with our businesses, mostly what we are giving users is visibility. Because if you have goods at home, all you want is to sell. And the best place to sell now is online. Because our physical address might limit you. I know getting, for example, space in most of these big malls is expensive. And mostly, for example, people of my age. Rent is expensive. Yes. Not many can afford a stall in one of those malls. But what we are giving you is we are telling you, take this space. It's virtual. But you are going to sell. And you are going to make more money because we are targeting. For example, we have an app online in Kenya. So with online Kenya, we pull data from all this major shopping sites, Junior, Kilimol, Andonio, all these places. And we put the data there and put. And for example, it has 10,000 downloads on Playstop. And then millions of people can access now the e-commerce website. So we are saying, we're giving you this visibility. 10,000 people have downloaded online Kenya on their apps, on their phones. Do you have the iOS as well? The iOS are not yet. But we are hoping at some point to be able to give that market the same. All right. So you have the Android version. And so for 10,000 people have downloaded this. This is massive success to you at 26. 10,000 downloads. But this is not the goal. The vision is bigger and broader. Yes. So with now the 10,000 and the hundreds of those that are accessing our site. Now this is the visibility we are giving our customers. And we hope we transform the same into value and have many people buying. All right. At this day and age, when somebody hears a stutter as an investor myself, I'm not an investor. But if I were an investor, then you come to me with an idea of an online shop. I'd be like, I've heard up to 100,000 ideas of online shops in the world right now, in the country. There are so many. What is the difference between yours and their ones that are existing? So one is uniqueness. And just getting you visible because some of these sites are just too big. And your items might just, if you're not a big brand, for example, your item might just get lost in the listing. It's like a supermarket. Yes, these supermarkets. But when you have some shelves are given to preferred brands. To preferred brands, yes. So even when searching, you get the items that appears are not yours. And maybe as I mentioned, if you want to grow your brand or the items you're offering are unique, you might want a space where it's just you. You control the look of the site. For example, when you go to those other places, the site looks the same. Where the products are listed are the same. They don't give you that place where you can just grow your brand and stuff like that. So everybody can come and set up a shop here. So when I set up a shop, I'm looking at a day and time when 100,000 people have set up shops. A screen is only this big. We can't have 100,000 shops on one screen, right? So at this day and time, I'd be having my own URL to share with my people. You can buy my stuff here. Yes. It's possible. Yes, so we have the two options. We have the store. And then we have the dookah option. The dookah, for example, if your shop is creative arts, so you can get creativearts.co.ke. So that's where your home is. Or you can just go to dookah.co.ke.shop for the store. And then you get your URL for your merchandise. Wow, wonderful. So far, people have set up shops. Yes. It's existing. All right. And if I get on dookah, I'll be visible. That's a fact. Yes. Security. Yes, you have to talk about security because we're talking about money here. We're talking about ransacking. We're talking about taxes. So for the security, one thing is all our sites are assigned. So when you're accessing, we call it the SSL certificate. So when you come in, you get a free SSL certificate, which means even the user will see that it's verified. And all the communication between a user and the system, yes, it has been encrypted. So that's one of the first layer of security. The other one is money. As we don't store any information that the person identified as money is concerned, we use other providers who have been accredited for transaction. So we can actually rely on their success. And we know if this person is accredited, and we know their systems are secure, and they are also an international company, now you can get, like for us, we've made sure the communication between our users and the systems is secure, and the transaction is also secure. All right, so you've played your part, secured what you need to secure. Yes. If you don't have money, you'll be held accountable. So our hope is they don't actually do it. They don't, so that you build the faith in your customers. All right, it's very hard to talk about eco-mass without talking about blockchain technology. So what does blockchain technology mean to you first? So blockchain is, I'd call it more of a ledger where you can put transactions. And at any point of the transactions, you know, like there's a group of people. We can all agree that whatever is stored in that ledger is actually true. Yeah, so for me, that's my understanding of this. So it's more of a ledger? Yes. And what is stored in this ledger is actually true. Yes, and if. So under blockchain technology is where we have all these coins, internet coins. You have the Bitcoin. You can help me name a few. There's the Bitcoin. The Bitcoin, there we have, yeah. All right, all these things, what I understand with money, every single coin or note has an eco amount or eco-valued gold in the central bank of that particular country to match it, right? What regulates these coins on the internet? So I would think it's supply and demand. Yes, so if there is a huge, although I can't say they have real value, like itself a Bitcoin or Ethereum, it suffers like what we attach value, like I said, like gold, how it gets the good value. I would say it's through supply and demand because if the demand is high and then the supply, it's actually very limited because you actually have to do work. You have to mine. You have to expand computer resources to gain maybe one. What are these computer resources you're talking about? Computer resources, maybe power. Then mostly it's power, but also the computing, maybe the computing. Knowledge. The power, the computing power. It's, for example, if you have maybe a not so powerful computer, you're not likely to mine a lot. So you have to make an investment. It's the same way where we mine minerals, gold, and stuff like that. OK. So you guys have brought it. The tech guys have brought it to the computer. Yes, you have to make huge investments. Do you think this currency is going through the world sometimes? Personally, I would not bet on it. And I know it's controversial. But from what I've seen, maybe it might be an alternative currency, but it might not. In the far future, yes. The future of our currencies will be digital currencies. All right. So to deviate so much, or to digress. But since we have here, you can teach us about this blockchain technology before we get back to Nollo. So say there's the Bitcoin and Ethereum. And I want to come up with another one. I'm allowed to come up with another one if I want, right? What are some of the things I do to beat these guys? How does this work? So for me, I'll first give a disclaimer. As far as digital currencies are concerned, I'm not that much informed. Like I have the basic knowledge of the industry. And this is what I'm looking for. Just basic knowledge for the industry. But what I think is you just have to convince people like this is the thing they need so that you can create demand for the same. Supply and demand, like you said, is how this works. Yes, you just have to convince people. Thank you very much. Have you incorporated these ways of buying things in your platform? Not at the moment. Yes, because the market you are dealing with is mostly we want to deal with easily accessible currencies, like easily accessible methods of payment like in PESA, like PESAPA, like PAPA. Those are the methods we have because that's our market. Yes, so in future. So you need to understand your market first. There's no need of bringing the blockchain to people who don't understand it yet. Yes. So we hope if people learn to do it, in case ours will just be incorporating and say, these are an alternative currency. Oh, this is an alternative currency. And while you go, you improve, you increase ways of transacting. You increase the number of shops and whatnot. All right, so Doño is different from other online stores. You get to open your own stall or own dooker on the platform. That is the difference between Doño and the rest of them. I didn't say it out wrong. Why 254 channel on Twitter, why 254 underscore channel on Instagram, and why 254 on Facebook. Don't forget to leave the hashtag why in the morning and entrepreneurship Tuesday. How many people are you so far right now? So far, the team. Yeah, the team. How big is the team? So the team, we have two founders and then we have three additional employees. Two founders? Yes. Why do all these tech companies have two founders? Why is it always two founders, two founders, two founders? It's important so that one can cover your black, like your blind spot. And then, yeah, so two, it's all three. It's a good number. Two or three is a good number. Yes, because now you get to bounce your ideas and then it's a shared vision. And then you start getting employees who share also your vision. So you have two founders now? Yes. What is the name of the other founder? We need to send him a shout out. Kiv, Kiv Washeera. Kiv Washeera, shout out to you, Kiv Washeera. How old is Kiv? Kiv is 20 or 21. Kiv is 20 or 21. Wow. And you guys already have a physical office in Riverside that you run. You at the age of 26, Kiv at the age of 21. Co-founders with an office, with employees that you pay salaries. Do you have any investors? So investors not at the moment. So it's a deliberate decision we've made just to first grow our business and to see what the value of our business is. So that has been our approach with this. Yes. Your approach is to grow the business first and make it valuable first before you can invite investors. In the long run, you're always up to invite investors when you want to grow the business. That's the plan. Where did the capital come from? So the capital was from my savings from the previous employment. And then also Kiv himself has been working as a freelancer for a long time. So he saved some cash as well? I hear there's a window of time where startups don't make any money. And capital is spent, spent, spent, spent. Are you guys prepared for this period? So we've kind of prepared for this. But we know it's actually just working with the little we have because as long as our business is small, we hope our expenditure is not as much. So it's just growing with the business, optimizing the resources and redirecting them where they are needed. So if there's something we can cut on, we make sure that's all we can afford. If it's something that's just good to have, we make sure we don't have it. But if it's something that is something that, it's essential for the success of our customers, that's what we give them. So we just make sure we are running a lean business. With startups, there's something we call edge here. Edge, edge. So this person might say, ah, our site has edge because we only deal in household products. Our site has edge because we only target this and that. What is the edge of your online? Mostly our edge is creatives. Like the people who found mostly setting up shops are guys dealing with arts, fashion. People dealing with jewelry. Yes, so mostly creatives. Yes, because they want to stand out and it's something that we are enabling them to do. So you're not going for the masses. You're going for people who suit your platform. Is that what I'm getting from you? It's actually not, it wasn't a deliberate... It just happened. It just happened, yes. So it's something that actually is coming. The same way Twitter became a protest platform. They never knew Twitter was going to become a protest platform. All right, so these are things you learn with time. All right, I like this so much. As we come to the end of this, you can share with them the site, how they can get to type the key in to find the site, the social media handles as we wrap this up. Okay, so I'm Gashiri, Donio Online. To get to Donio, it's donio.co.ke. That's our site. For Twitter is Donio Online, Instagram Donio Online, and Facebook Donio Online as well. All right, thank you very much for sharing that, but our last question of the day. Do you have a get scandal feeling? So all the time that this could go anyway, but it's something that I've already made peace with, like I'm prepared to go it all for a long time just to see what will happen, because it's something I've discovered that, yes, failure is always there actually, because with entrepreneurship, you're always taking risks, but you actually, you don't fail if you actually don't do it. So I have to do it. So you always have to do it? Yes, so that you know whether you failed or not. But you never get scared of failing. It's something that you've accepted that is there. At this point now I've accepted, yes, failure is a possibility. Yes. But you still go in. That is a spirit moment. Thank you very much for coming through to I in the Morning, J-Quart alumnus, and a question is coming from one of our viewers. My director tells me, the J-Quart has had a lot of incidences. Yes, so many white color criminals. I've come from J-Quart. What do you have to say about this? Well, for the many white colors criminals, so I'll say mostly this one is, this something that you'd likely find in a place where you have all these brilliant minds. So first we have to admit J-Quart has brilliant minds. Yes. Before we can move on to white color criminals. Before we can move on, yes. Before we can move on, you have to admit that J-Quart produced all this kind of, of these brilliant minds, and some of them might seek other avenues of making money other than, you know, the right way, or the legal way. Following the legal way, yes. All right. Yes. So I won't ask you what you blame for others taking the legal parts, but do you think unemployment is one of them? Yes, I think unemployment is, actually I'll peg it as the major factor. Yes, and also maybe there's a culture in Kenya where maybe even in the news, you see people, they want quick riches. Yes. And the people we look up to always have corruption cases. Yes. So you see all these ones, it's like a culture which is coming. It's unfortunate, but it's something that is likely maybe to infect even the young people. All right. So it's a culture. There is desperation and employment. It's also a culture. The culture is very important. Yes. It's an underlying issue. Yes. Wow. Thank you very much, man. Your texts match, your books match, you're socially smart as well. Thank you. What a correlation. Thank you very much, Mr. Gashiri. Gashiri. Gashiri, that's how you pronounce it. Yes. The C is C. Yeah, it depends on what part of Kenya you come from, it's probably Gashiri. Mr. Gashiri, CEO and founder or co-founder of Ndonyo Online. Check it out online so you can get to know or you can get to set up a shop or a dooker for yourself. This is our first interview of the day, our first segment of entrepreneurship, Tuesday, on Y and the morning. Jojimuchachi is coming with another one. You never know where she's gonna take it, art or tech. Stay tuned so you can get to know. I go by the name of Barry Moses or it's Barry Mone, with Social Media Platform.