I’m on a Ghanaian email tech list and, opening my email recently, I was pleasantly surprised to see that a Ghanaian team was pitching at TechCrunch Disrupt.
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Saya is an app for texting. That mixes SMS, Facebook chat and hyperlocal findability to get in conversations with those near you. They’re on Android, BlackBerry and waiting for their iPhone app to be approved.
Robert’s pitch revolves around the 5.8 billion non-smartphones in the world, and how that market has needs that need to be addressed by apps like their own. It provides ways to communicate via SMS in a much more elegant way.
Saya is in a tough position; trying to get US and European-based investors to think that anything to do with old tech like SMS can be big is quite difficult. Their paradigm is set in the West’s way of thinking about being intoxicated the newest tech, not understanding how much of the world more fully uses each technology before discarding it.
Without knowing anything about how many users Saya has, I can say that it looks like an app that will really work in Africa and therefore many other parts of the world. Just looking at the app, it seems that they have a strong focus on product, and are paying attention to things like design details that really do matter.
Good job guys, and good luck!
