The world continues to move both forward and sideways, as Covid-19 continues to dominate the media landscape. The ability to reason, understand and extrapolate is one that only exists with humans and that has been of great value since the beginning of the pandemic. It could not be a better time to realize how we at Standard Gateway, with our focus on education and technology, have a very important mission.
Many don’t know what we do at Standard Gateway but we are the operator of the de facto standard/national examination preparation platform in Rwanda. We expanded to education and technology afterward to try to find a way we can operate our services sustainably, but still trying to find our footing.
Recently we have added online examinations where we have exams for Rwanda and Kenya. We have also added an eTicketing product to our portfolio with the same philosophy of completely transforming how travel tickets are acquired, same as we have pioneered and widely made it possible to access exam preparations.
Our goal for Q1 was to kickstart the business launch for Kezastore.com eTicketing while we drive forward online examination at the same time. Little did we know that the pandemic wasn’t over yet. Two major impacts to our plan were the delay reopening of the academic year, which prompted us to delay the rollout of our online examination product and the suspension of interdistrict travel for Rwanda.
For online examination preparation services that we offer primarily through our flagship website: www.nationalexamination.com we moved forward with the plan connecting the site with kezastore.com eExams. Currently, when a user visits nationalexamination and does a search, he/she is presented with an option to go on the new site to take online exams. While we house a handful currently, we have a number of exams in the review process that will be released and uploaded in the near future.
For eTicketing, the suspension of inter-district and inter-provincial travels put a strain on travel agency operators closing major offices and were put in a position to at times reduce the workforce. Nevertheless, we had moved forward with assembling the team to drive business development as well as media sales and marketing for the eTicketing business.
Since March 15th, Paci has accepted to drive business development for Rwanda, focusing on Kigali City, South and Easter Province Region. RW-KSE Region, in the interim coordination Business Development for Rwanda. For the Second Rwanda Region: RW-NW, we plan to bring on the team a second member tentative beginning Q3. This is a major milestone for Standard Gateway and Kezastore eTicketing as we challenge the market and work with travel agencies to completely transform how bus tickets are acquired.
In Q2 2021, we plan
- We plan to accelerate business development for eTicketing, outreaching to travel agency operators and commencing online ticketing with launch partners for Rwanda and Burundi.
- With this effort, we will ensure to communicate to every travel agency to inquire if they are interested to let us know. With online ticketing being a new distribution channel, we expect this product to slightly disrupt how tickets are acquired and impact those who will resist to join our online ticketing platform
- Finalize education Product offering packaging, currently, we are exploring services such as data warehousing, academic performance analytics, and of course online examination for both self-examination and school or district level examinations
- Finalize marketing and branding plans, we expect kezastore eTicketing to quickly be copied, it is hence important that our MOUs and branding is strategically designed to position kezastore.com as a whole in a winning spot for the long haul.
- Continue establishing the media, sales, and marketing that will be responsible for the ultimate commercialization of e-ticketing and online exams products on kezastore, engage travel agency partners, and build a ticketing agents network (Planned for Q3 2021)
- Organize events to communicate to our users, partners, and customers for our services, solutions, and products
We are truly living in challenging times, but we believe in every challenge there lies an opportunity. Our focus on education and technology allows us to embed technology in everything we do and there can’t be a better time to introduce products that not only solves everyday challenges but also helps curb Covid 19 pandemic.
For instance, there should be no reason to show up at the bus park with no ticket, if everyone uses kezastore.com to purchase a ticket online, travel agencies will avoid lines, an excessive number of people waiting in the lobbies and eventually slightly reduce transmission and contribute to a quick return to the new normal.
If you have any feedback, partnership inquiries, etc do not hesitate to reach out to us.
Cheers…
SG Team
N.B: This article was originally published at http://standardgateway.com/blog
Standard Gateway is an online and offline products and services provider focused on education and technology, visit http://standardgateway.com for more information | You can also visit our different products: www.nationalexamination.com | www.edrivingschool.org | www.kezaplex.com | https://www.itike.rw/v2 |