An online bookshop co-founded by one of Kenya’s most popular bloggers and creative writers – the Magunga Bookstore – has been nominated among the finalists in the Startup of the Year Africa 2017 contest in the eCommerce category.
The Magunga Bookstore, described as African Online Book Market Place, is a project which was initiated by Magunga Williams and Abigael Arunga. Currently, the team comprises of two other members – that is Mabiria David (the Web & Mobile Developer) and Troy Onyango (the Books Scout).
The online bookshop sells African literature – both paperback & eBooks – including Novels, Poetry, Chapbooks, Anthologies, Short Stories and Children’s Books among others.
According to the team, they “offer readers a platform to get to order exclusively African Literature and authors a platform to showcase their literature work, market them and eventually make a sale.”
In terms of milestones, the platform has so far managed to stock close to 500 African literature titles and made sales of over Kshs 1 million (US $10,000) in less than a year since its launch.
Startup of the Year award is a contest organized by Bonjour Idée with the support of over 50 partners consisting of international corporations, incubators, chambers of commerce, media, competitive centers and influential blogs. While seeking to shed light on disruptive startups, the contest is meant to add value to the partners’ actions at the heart of the entrepreneurial ecosystem of innovation and startups, and put them in contact with innovative startups.
The contest kicked of on November 9 2016 while the online application phase ends today – December 31, 2016. The online voting phase will run from January 1 – 15, 2017, while the eventual finalists will be announced on January 16, 2017. On January 25, 2017, the finalists will then be invited to make their pitches at an event in Casablanca, Morocco culminating in the overall awards ceremony a day later on January 26, 2017 at the same venue.
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