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#DEMOAfricaTop30 — LocName Helps You To Create A More Unique Memorable Address

gharage
gharage
Published in
3 min readAug 27, 2015

With a lot of unstructured, informal addressing systems in Africa, a lot needs to be done to help people find directions to even the popular places via the Map. Ghana, for instance, just went through a new addressing system, and with the suspension of the Google Map Maker project, I wonder how long it will take till these addresses reflect on Google Maps, for instance.

Without relying on government systems, LocName helps people to create their own personal LocName containing their location, and most importantly, put it under a unique name that would act as a postcode and a new address.

LocName aims to solve the issues of areas with no proper addressing system and places that have difficult addresses, like slums, remote villages or newly built cities. Through a mobile application and a website, LocName shortens the details of any location and produce a unique address that can be easily shared and remembered.

[Tweet “@Loc_Name aims to solve the issues of areas with no proper addressing system and places that have difficult addresses.”]

The app finds users’ current location and allows the users to assign a name to that location. This LocName will function as that location’s new address. A LocName provides many formats for the new short address varies from a random alphanumeric code i.e [XYZ123] to a personalized name, i.e. Adam@LocName, a short URL Locna.me/Adam and a QR code.

The LocName or short address will include all locations details like GPS coordinates, street address and owner informations. I find this even more convenient as it’s almost impossible to memorise Google Map’s URLs for even very popular addresses and landmarks.

Currently, LocName Focus on Africa and MENA regions. Locname’s advantage over other competitors is providing a personalized address not limited to a random generated code, as I’ve already expressed. It also gives diverse format and wide range of alternatives for shorter address (Personalized Name, Code, URL, as well as QR code).

Accessible on all the platforms like Web, Smartphone, and tablet and not restricted to definite segment. A whole range of products as well as business apps that will helps individuals and organizations (NGOs & business). Finally, it presents itself with a crowdsourcing engine that corrects and validates addresses by users. That’s quite a run for other competitors.

Already, the startup has won the Top 3 award in Startup Weekend Giza. They have been incubated by Flat6Labs in Cairo. For a product like theirs, it’s no surprise that their one of the top 15 in Startup Istanbul 2014. LocName has also been selected to join the lisbon challenge incubation September 2015 from 400 ideas http://www.lisbon-challenge.com/. Finally, they have emerged as one of the Top 30 Startups for DEMO Africa this year, out of over 600 applications.

The team has a few reasons why they still chose DEMO beyond all their numerous successes in other programs.

  • Promote the project and its social idea for different ecosystems and entrepreneurs in Africa
  • Form a community that believes in LocName social impact and that is willing to help
  • Gain experience and new skills that will help the team develop and promote LocName
  • Get exposure to different cultures and entrepreneurship ecosystem
  • Promote LocName concept and vision in different regions to get the maximum exposure
  • Gather contacts and connections to help us expand into other countries in the region

Team

  1. Mourad Alashry (CEO): A successive entrepreneur who has 10 years experience of Project Management and Business Development in banking and telecommunication fields.
  2. Zeinab Alashry (Business Development Manager): She has MBA degree with over 5 years of experience in digital advertising and marketing with different multinational organizations including Yahoo.
  3. Mahmoud Moghazy (Senior Mobile Developer): A young but genius mobile developer. He has developed 9 live mobile Apps at 19 years old.
  4. Sebai Mansour (Product Manager): He has done MBA with Consumer Behavior as well as having 6 years of experience in sales and marketing.
  5. Ranya Maher (Senior Web Developer): She has 4 years of experience in Java and PHP and development.
  6. Hessein Almenawy (Business development and Marketing Executive) : A serial Entrepreneur that Co-Founded two startups, has more than 2 years experience as a COO at an Advertising and Marketing agency, Engineering Background with a lot of courses in Business development, marketing and Business Strategy from accredited Universities Worldwide.

Contact/Social Media/Job Openings

Demo
Demo Africa
Demo Africa 2015
Demo Africa Top 30
Locname

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gharage
gharage

Written by gharage

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