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Difbac Technologies founders Aaron Mwangi and Joel Omare during the interview. PHOTO | DIANA NGILA | NATION MEDIA GROUP
By Annie Njanja
In Summary
After graduating from the United States International
University-Africa (USIU-Africa) in 2012, Joel Omare and Aaron Mwangi
did not look for jobs despite constant nagging from family and friends.
They had a bigger dream.
While pursuing their studies the duo spent most of their
free time doing part time IT jobs. Accustomed to finding opportunities
on their own, it was, therefore, not surprising that the two close
friends delved into entrepreneurship through establishing an IT firm
soon after university.
Difbac Technologies, the brainchild of the two
techies, may not be among the most talked about IT firms locally, but
the duo is making strides in the right direction. They say no rejection
in the market is capable of killing their spirit. Besides, they
subscribe to the ideology that opportunities are within reach waiting to
be grabbed.
For instance, while doing data entry community
service at the Supreme Court, they noticed that librarians dealt with
bulky papers and a lot of cutting and pasting of the various laws and
their respective amendments.
The duo decided to build a data management system
for the library, to save on costs and time. The two spent more than
three months at the Supreme Court library researching and familiarising
themselves with bulky books to create an effective system.
The application, which is now on a test-run, is
meant to keep laws and cases updated, besides making incidence of lost
case files a thing of the past. The web-based application will be
accessed through an intranet by judges and magistrates for referencing
purpose and by the librarians, who will be regularly updating the
content to ensure it is accurate and up to date.
“We are building the system, which we regard as an
economic solution for the Judiciary to ensure that it is interactive and
capable of providing case files and up to date laws,” said Mr Mwangi.
“Building a good rapport with people and
institutions is very important. It may not always result into business
but it guarantees referrals,” noted Mr Omare.
“After delivery of the solution, support and
maintenance services should be carried out regularly and so there is
nothing as a free job in IT because clients will always call when they
need help or when there is need to upgrade services,” he said.
Besides offering web-based solutions, the duo
develops software, e-commerce solutions and web-based applications and
management systems.
The management systems give real time reports of an
institution. For instance, if the solution is used in a school, the
management is able to get real time reports of its registered students,
financial position, the timetable module and details of who has edited
or fed data into the system.
Additionally, the ISO certified company offers
integrated solutions to help companies automate their operations. This
helps in facilitating and boosting networking efficiency in
organisations. The two techies develop and install personalised
solutions.
Years after dedicating their energy on growing the
business they seem well aware of the factors that result to growth of
any business.
“When delivering services, understanding customer
needs and meeting their demands is mandatory to guarantee success.
Keeping up with market trends is the other nature of our business that
cannot be brushed aside,” said Mr Mwangi. “Any IT firm should be at a
position to offer impactful solutions for businesses and institutions,”
he added.
Their portfolio includes Thermo restaurant where
they installed point of sale (PoS) system, Poise Kenya and Impact Africa
Adventures among others. The most basic service they offer is website
construction, which costs Sh35,000 while installation of the business
management solution ranges from Sh300,000 to Sh400,000.
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