Crypsense claim the inaugural Africa Pitch trophy

The SiGMA Pitch competition is SiGMA Group’s way of giving back by providing a launchpad for up-and-coming entrepreneurs to find success and recognition on a global scale. The competition made a comeback for the inaugural SiGMA Africa Summit in Nairobi this January.

After a gripping competition showcasing some of the most innovative ideas seen thus far, Crypsense Digital Group were chosen as the winners by the judges’ panel. Offering organised educational courses, digital resources, and a plethora of IT-related solutions to schools and universities, Crypsense are gamifying education on a whole new level.

Catch the interview with the reigning champions below.

Congratulations for winning the AIBC Pitch competition. How are you feeling right now? Are you enjoying the inaugural SiGMA Africa Summit?

Thank you, we feel amazing! The Expo is awesome and well-organised. Full-on appreciation to the organising committee for inviting and having us here.

We’re very happy to have you here ourselves! Do you think there are some qualities to your pitch; the way you presented your ideas perhaps, or even the idea itself, that helped you stand out from the rest of the competitors?

I think our product is solid. We love our product and we believe in the importance of going onwards with it. It’s going to be highly disruptive, across Africa and the rest of the world.

Can you tell me more about your project? What is it about? 

Sure. So Crypsense Digital Group is a capacity building and accelerator program. It will primarily be allowing companies to be deeply involved in the Web3 space remotely from a Web2 space.

We also have a financial asset front, a digital asset management platform where we analyse and determine what kind of assets are lucrative to invest in. Our analyses generate revenue from these predictions.

Do you have any planned partnerships ahead, any other companies that are on board with your projects?

Well, we are always open to establishing partnerships. We partner with top-tier, strategic partners to see that we achieve our agenda. We have partnerships across different divides for our custodial services. We have fire blocks. And in terms of training, we have distributed labs for product development.

I also understand that your project has something to do with essentially gamifying how we do education. How do you think that this will empower students?

We are changing the way education is done over a long period of time. Ideally, we reduce the number of notes and boring lectures that are pushing students from caring about their education. We want to make our methods of education more interesting and fun. It’s easier to incentivize students to pay attention once you have engaged them in this way.

The gamification process lies in the reward systems. The faster you learn, the more efficiently you finish your assignments, and you get rewarded for it. So the rewards are crucial and come in a wide variety. They could be NFT-based, scholarships, paid subscriptions.

Do you think that this project runs the risk of impacting educators negatively? 

In a way, the job of educators is to educate their students. If you see the gamification of education as a tool that helps educators get this job done, it becomes an interesting concept that we need to adopt more in our day-to-day lives. In other words, projects like ours won’t replace educators but make them more effective.

From a development point of view, what’s next in your journey?

Next on our journey is the launch pad. We are also developing our DApp for the virtual trading platform which we’re gearing up for this quarter and should be ready for testing in the next.

Let’s step away from the project for a while and let’s head into startup hivemind. How supportive of startups do you feel the community is in Africa?

I believe we’ve been lucky enough to have great support from many in the industry throughout our journey. We have received some crucial support from the African Blockchain Center, and have also been invited to the World Economic Forum. So the support has come from a number of sectors across the world.

I’d like to say that perhaps, we’re not quite as lucky as we have been blessed.

How impactful do you think events like the SiGMA Africa Summit are when it comes to startup projects such as yours? Do you have any advice for up-and-coming startups?

The SiGMA Africa Summit has given us a significant boost when it comes to networking, by bringing together big brands which essentially can hold your hand as they help you grow with them. Attending and winning this competition has been a significant part of our journey, one which we will remember forever.

For advice, I’ll just repeat what the judge said… “be aggressive!” Avoid being inconsistent with your work ethic and methods. Push for your hopes and dreams, and keep your eyes and ears open. Solutions to your long-term problems may come from the unlikeliest places and people!