Kenyan firm Create is in discussions with media houses over the rollout of its Epic mobile application, which seeks to improve the delivery of content to users.
The app, which is among 50 products chosen to pitch at the fourth edition of mobile startups event PIVOT East in Nairobi on June 24-25, provides a platform for a user to view all content provided by a media house in a simple, categorised format on their mobile phone, allowing them to view the media house’s website and YouTube account on one panel.
“We view it as a way to revolutionise online publishing for media houses while empowering the masses to pick and choose their favourite programmes, news and channels,” Create chief executive officer (CEO) Caesar Tuva told HumanIPO.
The company’s platform already has one successful implementation, with an app for Nation Media Group’s NTV built in six months and garnering 80,000 downloads in its first quarter, with 20,000 daily users.
Tuva said Epic was a platform all African media houses should be implementing, given the improvement it offers in terms of content delivery at a relatively low price.
“We are planning to get all the major media houses across Africa on the platform,” he said. “As media houses’ business processes and requirements shift over time, the digital departments – tasked with handling online presence and releasing apps that are in line with the business – often struggle to keep up with the demand for application functionality and user analytics.”
He said his company offered to fill this gap, with media houses not having the internal capacity to develop their own solutions.
“Hence Epic, a platform that allows media houses to leverage the power of the cloud while getting a world class user experience for their users all at a quarterly OPEX that is the cost of having one in-house engineer,” he said.
Epic leverages off the Microsoft Azure platform, Google DoubleClick and YouTube’s TrueView to allow users to view their favourite written content and video playlists, in turn providing the media houses with detailed analytics and research and design teams to keep their platforms relevant.
Tuva said the fact Epic costs less than international alternatives made it a more attractive proposition to African media houses.
“Most of the competitors are western companies whose pricing models limit the number of media houses that would be willing to sign up with them,” he said.
“This is not a new idea – it has been tried in the past – however the execution is what makes the difference between a fad and a trend that takes an industry to the next level. The team behind this is exceptional, the research and best practice application will definitely get better with time.”
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
