Sasa is a peer-to-peer e-commerce technology that connects offline artisans in the developing world to online consumers using a simple mobile phone.

Problem

Women in Africa produce 60-80% of the continent’s goods. They earn only 10% of incomes. Women face economic discrimination that leads to disproportionate representation in the informal economy, leaving them unable to access financial services such as banks, loans, or credit, and vulnerable to the dangers and limitations of the cash economy. Millions of women across Africa attempt to earn a living by supplementing meager incomes by making and selling crafts - a skill that roots them deeply in culture and community. Due to a costly export supply chain, their crafts are limited to the local economy with inconsistent demand.

Solution

Sasa empowers craftswomen to become global entrepreneurs. Sasa is an e-commerce platform that connects offline artisans in the developing world to online consumers using a simple mobile phone. With a patent-pending, SMS-based query system vendors create personal online storefronts using our mobile phone business tools. Global consumers can then buy directly from the vendors on Sasa ’s e-commerce website, revolutionizing the supply chain into a P2P exchange. Sasa builds bridges between local crafts markets of the developing world and the global digital marketplace. Sasa transforms the ubiquitous mobile phone into a tool that expands access to economic opportunity for women, giving them a greater share of the profits of the global craft industry.

Example

Our innovation leverages existing communications technology and infrastructure to pioneer a completely new marketplace. This new marketplace revolutionizes the way money and goods are exchanged during international trade, creating economic opportunity and increased profits for vendors, savings for consumers, and profit for Sasa . Sasa ’s Innovations Using Sasa artisans are able to independently create sustainable micro-enterprises using mobile phones, mobile money transfers, and reliable delivery services. Sasa Africa’s innovative technology consists of patent-pending, SMS-driven mobile phone business tools for vendors to automatically upload vendor profiles and products to a P2P e-commerce website for online consumers. Sasa connects artisans to global e-commerce, even if they do not have access to the Internet, a computer, or a bank account. Sasa offers four main innovations: 1. Vendors, with no need for Internet or a bank account, can create and manage their online vendor profiles via their personal mobile phones through Sasa . 2. Sasa facilitates payment, transferring international credit card payments into mobile money. 3. Sasa revolutionizes the current supply chain into a P2P exchange. 4. Innovative tracking tools ensure efficient and secure delivery within the P2P order fulfillment process.

Marketplace

Design-manufacture collaboratives, fair trade importers and Ebay World of Goods/Etsy, all provide access to US consumers to quality imported handmade goods. Sasa ’s scalable technology provides first-ever direct access to an enormous and entirely new market of micro manufacturers. Sasa will maintain our competitive advantage with retention strategies and evolving and innovating our services and technology. Our patent-pending, proprietary technology developed by our team at MIT positions us as 1) the only organization to provide an accessible international sales service to micro manufacturers and as 2) a service provider to the organizations that would traditionally be viewed as competition.