Startup: Kytabu

Nairobi Garage is home to great innovators and some of Kenya’s most amazing startups. Startups require nurturing and above all exposure so as to attract the right angels and mentors to ensure they succeed.

In light of this we will be doing a startup feature each week highlighting companies either sitting at our space or outside.

To start us off is Kytabu, a textbook subscription application.  Kytabu was designed to create the cheapest and most widely used form of textbook access to middle and low income families in growing economies of the world starting with Africa.

The company was started by Tonee Ndung’u a young Kenyan who envisioned making education accessible to middle and low income families.

His idea was born out of the fact that books are expensive and parents struggle to buy textbooks for their children where government provided material is less, which is often the case.

This puts enormous strain on families to sustain children in school and sometimes leads to drop outs and early marriages.

Kytabu solves this issue using a leasing format. Children get to use cheap tablets with e-books as well as mobile money platforms pre-installed. This allows the children to purchase a chapter, page or book according to need.

This can be done either for the hour, day, week, month or school term. With this kind of model, children have access to reading material and above all it initiates children into a digital world from an early age, ensuring development.

The company was entered into the GIST Tech-i competition and won. This attracted Kenyan government officials from the Ministry of Education who awarded Tonee a contract for his innovation.

Kytabu is certainly a brilliant startup and it’s potential to transform education in Kenya and Africa as a whole undisputed.

Be sure to check in with us again for more amazing startups.