Brastorne Enterprises has officially become a member of Draper Richards Kaplan (DRK) Foundation. The Draper Richards Kaplan foundation is a global venture philanthropy firm that supports early stage, high impact social enterprises.
Essentially, DRK finds, funds and supports exceptional leaders with innovative and highly impactful ideas that have great potential to scale and provides them with unrestricted capital as well as ongoing support – by joining their board of directors and partnering with the leader to help build capacity in the organization and scale their impact. DRK invests in a wide variety of sectors, both in the United States of America (USA) as well as internationally. To date DRK has invested in over 185 organizations across the world, which represent some of the most exciting new initiatives in the social sector. Over 150M+ lives have been affected by the DRK portfolio organizations and we are pleased to announce that Brastorne has now become part of this global movement.
Brastorne has built a suite of products targeting 300 million feature phone users in Africa, who are among the world’s poorest and most marginalized citizens. We provide access to trade (mobile marketplace), information, knowledge sharing, market prices, and chat services through feature phones, without the need for data or internet. Brastorne’s deep understanding of the mobile phone usage in Africa, expertise in technology, as well as affinity for the financial constraints of its users, has allowed it to scale rapidly to more than 1 million users in Botswana within two years of launching.
Between 2014 and 2016, global socially responsible investments grew by 25% to $23 trillion, a figure that clearly represents society’s growing demand for companies to acknowledge their role as influencers of the masses, and contributors to environmental and social welfare (McKinsey & Co). It is apparent that most telcos, versatile application designers, and the whole advanced economy are currently working against Africa’s poor. However, free access to the web empowers low-pay families to get to devices and administration that can lift
them out of destitution. Unfortunately, just 24% of the 1 billion individuals in Africa have routine access to the web, while destitute Africans are excessively detached.
Hence our central goal of connecting the unconnected.As a result of our partnership with telcos in Botswana, Brastorne has reached more than 1 million users altogether, with 150,000 month to month dynamic users—addressing 40% of dynamic telephone clients on the Orange portable organization in Botswana. In light of our traction with Orange in Botswana, we intend to expand our reach to other African nations. In May 2021, we dispatched Brastorne and mAgri to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in partnership with Orange DRC; within the first two months, we had reached 200,000 users in the country.
Through the DRK foundation support, Brastorne has had access to a treasure trove of resources, opportunities as well as connections that have taken Brastorne Enterprises to new and greater heights. We are looking forward to working with DRK foundation.
