They want to be Apple Inc of Africa in five years time. This was the message that came out strongly as I talked to Kelvin and Bonnie of Tusqee Systems, a technology startup company. No doubt they will make it, and listening to them one can envision the future which they described. Tusqee Systems has developed an SMS-based system that will revolutionalize the way parents communicate with the schools in which their children are learning.

When we were young, whenever school closed and we did not achieve pleasing results at the end of the term, we might have lied to our parents that we were not given our report forms. Perhaps some lies had to do with school fees, where you were given fees to pay but somehow the money never made it to the bursar’s office. This is what made Kelvin decide to create this school-sms system when he realized things haven’t changed since. With the system, a parent can query the exam results of his/her child, school fees details and other relevant information.

Kelvin started the venture in January this year, and later in May, he was joined by his long term friends and schoolmates Bonnie and Dan. Together, they developed the system and when the Pivot 25 competition was launched, they decided to apply, and to their pleasant surprise, they won in the Government, Agriculture and Education category!

Pivot 25 was a mobile apps competition and developer conference that brought together developers and would-be investors in a forum where developers show-cased their applications for a chance to win some cash prizes.

I asked them what this win means, apart from the $5,000 they were to receive as category winners. They inform me that they are yet to receive this money, months after Pivot 25 was concluded. However, they are not complaining, they say the exposure and experience they received at Pivot 25 is unparalleled.

Perhaps that’s how they managed to enter and win another competition that just concluded recently, called IPO 48, where applicants were asked to submit ideas and people would vote for the winning application by pledging virtual money (virtual investment). The idea with the most virtual investment money would win 25,000 Euros worth of investment.

Their idea is simple yet powerful. With the ubiquitous nature of the mobile phone in Africa now, it makes sense to use it to enable parents communicate efficiently with the schools in which their children learn. The Tusqee Systems team has now grown to six members; the three new members will handle the business side. Another challenge they had was obtaining a short-code with which the SMS communication would use. (Here is an article about the high cost of providing an SMS-based system in the Daily Nation.)

Currently, Tusqee Systems is running the pilot project in a couple of schools. They hope that they can roll out the system next year with great success. They want to expand to other countries in Africa, and in five years, they may be just the Apple of Africa as they envisioned.