Kevin Nyango
In Uganda, 1.5 million people are middle-class and out of these, 350,000 people keep traveling. That means there are 1.15 million people who can afford to travel, but they are not . The idea led to the innovation of Roundbond.com, an online technology that helps in travel booking that helps people to find places they want to travel and save for the journey.
Roundbond.com was founded by Mr. David Gonahasa, a Ugandan citizen who was 32years old by then. Although the finding of the technology was not just a walk in the park, it costed a lot before the company became what it is today. David had to quit his well-paying job of Ssh7 million, sold his land at the cost of Ssh40 million, and started the online platform in February 2013.
After paying various debts, he remained with Ssh7 million only. He had to cut down on his cost of leaving and adjust to life lower than what he was used to just to make the company grow. He managed to get a loan of $20,000 from a friend. That loan helped him to hire a team, complete the project and introduce it to the market. At the start of their operation, the company managed to sell Ssh15 million which made him think that they were heading to the right direction but when they got out running the project, that day it rained and they had to refund the money. The refund gave them the first experience of the whole market.
In January 2014 worst happened to them in that they launched platforms which came down on the same day which forced the platform to upgrade its servers from $100 a year to $50 a month. A week after launching a new server, the company managed a deal from Airtel to offer travel packages to 15 customers to Cape Town to watch African Nations Championship (CHAN) tournaments. It was a good deal, but it was watered down by Airtel’s mode of payments making them not to benefit from it since during the time of payment the Ugandan shillings had gone down compared to dollars.
The team was running out of money by March 2014, so they had to organize for fundraising to get money since they could not get loans from banks due to lack of a good track of financial records. On their mission of fundraising, the platform managed to get two brothers who agreed to fund the project, but the challenge was that they would be given money in bits to manage risks. The company continued to source for partners, but they never managed to get. It forced the company to close up due to lack of finance.
By good luck, Roundband.com managed to get partners; something they failed to have because they were Africans. Due to its technology capacity, the company started to get more contracts since the investors had confidence in them. The company again suffered a major setback since they were building a product and not generating revenue.
The company opted to employ an experienced general manager since by then there was a group of intelligent persons without experience who were running the startup. Professional work by the GM started bearing fruits since the company started to generate money. What dragged the company back was that it failed to update the books of account. This led Roundband.com to a problem since the revenue started to pile. It brought the development of the technology to a standstill.
Currently, the technology got an Arab investor with travel experience from Dubai who is helping them to balance their balance sheet. At the beginning of 2017, the investor gave the platform a deal of Ssh450 billion both cash and technical advice. The platform is now doing great in the market.
