e-Mobilizer won the first round of the BASES Entrepreneurship Challenge. This challenge is considered one of the world’s most prestigious business plan competition. I am very excited about this.
The e-Mobilizer service is a Web portal with a mobile interface that allows users to post their products and service information via cell phones to the Internet marketplace to engage in a sale.
The biggest problem facing micro-entrepreneurs in developing countries is the inability to access the larger public market and its market information. They do not have efficient channels to reach customers. This disadvantage creates a major obstacle that limits their potential, and often forces them into a life of hopelessness and poverty.
e-Mobilizer solves this problem by leveraging the existing cellular infrastructure to connect micro-entrepreneurs to the Internet marketplace through cell phones. The service empowers micro-entrepreneurs, mostly women, and helps them to grow their businesses and generate incomes to send their children to schools.
Just like micro-credit gives the poor people access to capital, e-Mobilizer gives them access to markets and information. It is a powerful mean to fight global poverty.
There were about 330 million cell phone users in China at the end of 2004, in contrast with 80 million Internet users The number of cell phone users is predicted to reach 550 million in China and more than 3 billion worldwide by 2008.