ITU Telecom World 2018: Our Experience

ITU Telecom World 2018 was held in Durban from the 10th – 13th September 2018.  What is ITU Telecom you may ask? Well, it is one of the largest events bringing together key players from the Government and Private Sector with the sole focus on unpacking how ICT (and specifically ICT developed by SME’s) can create a positive impact in the world.  90 countries, over 3100 delegates, 300 or so exhibitors and loads of networking and discussion.

For an SME ITU’s benefit is simple (see below image):

Fixxr was fortunate enough to be selected to be one of the SME’s to man and represent South Africa at the South African Pavillion.  Here are our highlights…

Pre-ITU

Let us take a sentence or two to describe what Fixxr is.  Basically, Fixxr is an online car services platform connecting car owners with experienced mobile mechanics in your area.  Our mechanics are dispatched to your home or office to perform booked services.  Here is a short explainer video:

This idea, our ‘soft-launch’ in April/May of this year of an initial MVP and our traction to date created enough of a ‘good impression’ for us to be selected by Standard Bank, Ericsson and the Department of Postal Services (the headline sponsors of the South African Pavillion) to be one of the SME’s.

This was after pitching with over 100 other SME’s in the hopes of being selected.  We were fortunate enough to be.  Leading up to ITU the support provided by, in particular, Standard Bank was absolutely phenomenal!  And even with the drama of missing flights we were excited to be part of this event.

Pitching

While we didn’t receive any awards at the ITU Telecom World 2018 we still had the awesome privilege of pitching our business to an established jury of judges.  A 5-minute pitch with 10 minutes of questions is a dauntingly little amount of time to squeeze your entire business into!  We received really positive feedback so are nothing but happy with how it went.  The calibre of SME’s pitching was absolutely world-class so to just be counted amongst them was an honor – watch this space though! 🙂

South Africa definitely did the country proud with Pulego Communications receiving top honors!  Other top honors went to Tuse Applications, Uthini and Talamus Health.  Here is a full list of winners and finalists.

Brand & Media Exposure

This was by far the most valuable element of the conference.  Having the ability to showcase your business to over 3100 delegates from over 90 countries.  Being able to discuss your business with ministers, government officials, C-suite executives, and the media did nothing but good to create confidence in the awesome uniqueness of each of our value propositions and build valuable brand exposure.

It is not every day you get to have massive brands tweeting about you or mentioning you much less knowing you exist!

Conclusion

Short and sweet – we had fun, we learnt, we networked, we built relationships that will help our businesses grow.  Thank you to the corporates (Standard Bank in particular) who afforded us such an amazing opportunity!