Gripeline by Nandimobile

A few weeks ago, I attended Jason Calacanis’ Launch event in San Francisco. It was an impressive debut. I don’t think I have ever attended a launchpad-style event with so many knock-your-eye out companies, ever.

My usual style is not to write up a short post based on a cursory look at some technology. I generally like to use a tool for hours, or days. to get a real deep feel for its capabilities. I intend to do that with other products that debuted at Launch.

But in the case, of one product, I will bend my usual pattern, since it is devised for use my a company, and as such I would be hard-pressed to test it in my usual way.

And of course, I am only interested in writing about outstanding products, and I was very impressed with what I heard about Nandimobile, a Ghanaian startup that traveled to the US for the event, and wound up winning the 2011 Launch Award for Best Business. (And they might have won for Best Pun, too, if Jason had decided to give that out.)

As stated on the company website:

Gripeline is a customer support service that allows customers of companies to send feedback, comments and questions to companies using their mobile devices. It also provides an avenue for representatives from the companies to respond from an online computer interface in real time with an answer or response. The messages can be sent by end-users via SMS or WAP channels. These messages are aggregated and delivered to the companies’ online accounts which can then be accessed by customer service personnel(s) in charge. The panel enables the company to monitor, analyze and respond to the messages.

Anne Amuzu

The presentation by Anne Amuzu was one of the best at the show. She and her co-founders — Edward Tagoe and Michael Dakwa — had won a contest at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology is Accra for Gripeline.

The product is based on the insight that many people would like to use their mobile phones to contact support organizations of product and service companies, and perhaps governments as well. Gripeline provides a dashboard for the support organization to manage these conversations with their users:

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Gripeline provides various metrics to allow the support team to manage their work better:

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Gripeline is a very cool startup, with a very simple and powerful business proposition. I bet they will be finding users here and abroad in the months to come.