Africa-Press – Lesotho. IF you think you know anything about Lesotho, find this app and you will realise you don’t. The National University of Lesotho (NUL) graduates, teamed up with University of Cape Town (UCT) graduates to make an app that will help you find essential services and important places in Lesotho, which you didn’t even know existed — right up to your doorstep.
Suppose you find yourself or your loved one in a dangerous situation and you need urgent help from the police or an ambulance. Life is in danger and every minute counts. The question is do you know the numbers to call? Let’s whisper this one so no one hears… most of us don’t know the numbers; is that not true?
Don’t feel guilty about it, their company called Enigma, which, when loosely said, can mean a puzzling thing, a mystery, a riddle, a conundrum, a paradox, something difficult to understand, is there for all that.
“We wanted to be just as puzzling as our name,” said Saleem Ismail who is an NUL graduate and the Managing Director of Enigma.
Saleem Ismail is joined in the team by Neo Mokoena, and ’Maulle Matšela, also from NUL and Jane Thaane from UCT (another UCT friend is no longer with the team). For the lovers of nature, there is no doubt that the Mountain Kingdom provides amazing scenery.
But, how many of us know which places to visit as tourist attractions around the country? When you finally find Servicebox, you will realise you might have been misleading yourself if you thought you knew all that was there to know.
Time would fail us if we were to relate to you, how easy it is now to locate Accommodation, ATMs and Bank Branches, Mobile Money (EcoCash and M-Pesa Agents), Police stations and even Telephone Taxis in a click.
The list is growing by the day. “But,” skeptics may begin to argue, “We can already Google these places and services and find where they are anyway. ”
Hold on, that is not always the case folks. And for a simple reason, the information you see on the web, which you can Google, is the information that was put by someone there.
“If no one puts it there, it won’t be there,” Saleem says “And usually that is exactly what happens.
” It is a pure logic. How many of you would have been able to Google and find a Standard Bank ATM “hidden” in Costa du Sol, Border, in Maseru before this app?
There is another good reason this latest product is taking the local IT market by storm! Look! It allows you to zoom into the area in which you want to find services.
Say you find yourself in the middle of Maseru and you need quick cash. The app will allow you to find the ATMs any number of kilometers away from where you are.
Suppose you zoom 5 km radius, you find the location of just one ATM near you. You increase your scope to 10 km and, oops! There are now 5 ATMs in your vicinity! The same thing can be said about other services.
But eish! This app! It doesn’t only show you that you to have 5 ATMs in your vicinity, it also shows you where they are on the ground because it is connected to the Global Positioning System (GPS)! Yours is just to go there! How simpler can it get?
Now it’s your turn. If you want the app, just download it, for free, on Google Play! (Or follow the link: bit. ly/servicebox-android) Put it comfortably on your smart phone or tablet and start exploring.
And you won’t sweat for that! If you have a desktop or a laptop, why not just visit the website; www. servicebox. co. ls? It is that simple! As we enter the era of Information Technology (IT), NUL and its products are more than prepared to keep you on your toes!
But how did the company, Enigma Inc, erupt like a volcano, as if from nowhere, to take a centre stage amongst us? “When we finished schooling we went to find jobs like everybody else,” Saleem says.
“During that time, we used to develop open source products as a team,” he says.
“It was as if we were testing our abilities and potential. Indeed we tested them to the limits. ”
Here is a few words of wisdom to the youth, “we read a lot of books on software development to supplement the knowledge we got from school and we had little time for fun as we used to meet after work to share the knowledge.
Now their company has software development as their core mission in the unchartered territory that is Lesotho, and they specialize in responsive websites (readable on smartphones, tablets and personal computers), web applications (systems used by organizations) and mobile apps.
The team has special thanks towards Econet Telecom Lesotho and LTDC – Lesotho Tourism Development Corporation who did not hesitate to partner with them to make this extraordinary project a success.
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