Who are the thinkers behind Majamba?

Part of the Majamba team (who showed up for the photo shoot)

Thanks to Enea, Maya, Fed, Jeannine and Mattia (who are in the photo) as well as Nico, Diego, Shyam, Chandan, Deepak, Aslam, Narendra, Chirag, Anil, Jaldip, Nandini, Rahul, Fabrice, Bhaskar, Chris, Jeff, Damien, Timm, Marc, Tom, Noel, Joe, Mathias, Alex, Ramakrishna, Manish, Mike, Simon, Sebastien, Laurent, Dipankar, Caroline, Thomas, Sandy, Didier and many months of research, planning, development, user testing, partnership management, integration, more development, launching test campaign and polishing - I am pleased to report that Majamba.Me is fully functional. In the process I have invested all my life's savings, received recognition and investment from the Swiss Government, made some very good friends and found a way to end global poverty. 

What is Majamba.Me?

Majamba.Me is an innovation that turns social interaction into social good. Majamba.Me is the world's most rewarding way to introduce yourself. As a member you create a visual profile page. You select a photo that tells your story. You can add a few words and your social links. Your visual profile is the front page of your world on the Internet. Its your social resume, your social card. And the more views your profile on Majamba.Me gets, the more Majamba Hugs you get and you can use your hugs to get fair trade gifts for free. Thus creating jobs for the hardest working people on the planet. 

What is the Goal?

Once we achieve 100M active users, we will be able to have a direct impact on lifting 100M from poverty in a dignified way. The Majamba.Me platform is in open beta and I am inviting a few selected friends and family to try the platform, create a profile, share with friends. Our lead social enterprises is SEWA.ORG and our goal is to sign up hundreds of social enterprises. 

Why do this?

Today, 3,260,000,000 people try to live on less than $2.50 a day. Today, most of the ways of supporting them (donations or micro-loans) either destroy their dignity or burden them with a cycle of debt. Moreover the Internet revolution is passing them by because most of the 3.26 billion people living around the poverty line cannot read, write and most of them do not even have electricity. Sometimes, the only skill our friends have is to produce handmade goods. However, most of the time, they do not get a fair deal for their efforts, hence the cycle of poverty persists. I want to leverage my MBA, my business experience, the Majamba.Me platform as well as all my energy to make a dent on global poverty. 

What can we learn from the KONY 2012 Campaign?

Thanks to Nico, I had the opportunity to check out KONY 2012 video. Wow! Thanks Nico.

First of all, a little background - KONY 2012, is a campaign to bring an African rebel leader - Joseph Kony, active in and around Uganda, to justice for his crimes against children, whom he recruits for his rebel army. The campaign has various sub-campaigns - a twitter campaign, poster campaign and a petition campaign - anchored by a 30-minute video on YouTube. The campaign has been started by a San Diego based activist group called Invisible Children made up of three filmmaker friends.

Now why is this important? It turns out that these folks launched a video campaign on the 5th of March with a few thousand hits and then on the 7th of March went completely viral. We saw it it yesterday when there were 15M views and now there are 40M+ views. It is important because there are focusing on Peace, Love, Respect, Dignity and they are writing the book on social media campaigning with a very small budget. Well done!

What can we learn from them?

1. Do your Groundwork: For several months (even years), they kept an archive of all their videos and photos of their actions towards their chosen cause. They built a base of supporters at schools and community centers through a variety of awareness events.

2. Use Classic Building Blocks: They got the right building blocks - great logo, clear message, poster, flag, bracelet, website, Facebook page, Twitter account and of course the YouTube video! The numbered bracelet, missions, action day and action kit all add to the sense of community.

3. Make it Personal: By putting his own son in the video, the narrator of the film has made the story "real". It's a classic Hollywood ploy - used in Blood Diamond. Showing 30,000 children suddenly has more meaning when you realize it can happen to someone you care about.

4. Seed the Campaign: First the video was transmitted to the base. Then the base were encouraged to share the video with celebrities and lawmakers. All the building blocks were there. And the viewer (or celebrity team member) was emotionally ready to do something...and then LUCK happens. Oprah, P. Diddy, Justin Bieber and others and their twitter accounts started to forward the link to their followers. And the rest, as they say is history and fodder for the social scientists, the journalists and people like me.

What does it all mean?

We are now entering the new world of social activists as rock stars. Suddenly the guy or girl with a cause is the rock star, not just the guy with the guitar or just a pretty face. These are the activists joining the music, TV, sports, film, politicians and Internet entrepreneurs to truly change the world for good. One things is for sure, there will be more social activist stars. Because once the people like one, they want more...

From Curious Bystanders to Engaged Users: What did I learn for $20

The Journey

This week we completed our first product (Majamba Page) on the Majamba.Me Platform. And as planned we invested in a marketing campaign to launch this product. Yes, for the first time we invested $20 (Twenty US Dollars) in advertising. As you can see from the chart the traffic soared. Here are some major lessons:

1. Curious Bystanders vs. Engaged Users: We realized that there is a big difference between curious bystander (those who are interested in seeing how well we are doing or not) and engaged users (those who are interested in the utility of the site). We have to learn to engage the users by continuously improving the experience, enhancing the benefits and providing access anywhere (all devices).

2. Follow Your Path: We are now getting ready for building the VC Fund for Majamba. We now have the platform and the metrics. We need to get the financing sorted out for the next round. The next round will include recruiting good people. People who believe that there is more to life than just money; People who believe that a little start-up can indeed change the world; People who are good at what they do.

Now I finally get to use my super duper MBA!