A lot of our customers ask us ‘Why schools?’. Here is why as narrated by our founder, Boni.

“Sematime was started from the experiences I had while schooling at Othaya Boys High School in Nyeri County, Kenya. I got to witness firsthand how schools were struggling to relay even the simplest of communication to parents.

Back then if the school needed to communicate with parents they would either send them letters via the post office or put an advert on local dailies or have all teachers spend a whole day texting or calling hundreds of parents. Very taxing!

“What about email?”, you ask. This was way back in 2000s. Nobody used email. Even the school did not. All communication had to be done the old-fashioned way.

So in 2008 when I joined the University of Nairobi to pursue my undergraduate degree in Computer Science I decided to do something about this problem. By this time Kenya had started making progress in mobile connectivity with penetration rates of 39% and growing fast.

It was not hard imagining how revolutionary the mobile phone was going to be. With the little knowledge I had on computer programming I set out to build SchoolSMS. As the name suggests the product would be used by schools to communicate with parents through text messages. In addition, the software could also be used to send report cards and fee balance notifications.

SchoolSMS instantly became a hit with schools and parents. Placing a quarter page advert on the local dailies cost Ksh 250,000 (USD 250) a day while sending one message to 1,000 parents only cost them Ksh 1,500 (USD 15). No brainer!

It was not only cheaper by 17 times to use our software but was also very fast and reliable. With an accurate message delivery report you could tell exactly who received your message and who did not.

Emboldened by this early success I would discontinue my studies at the university to focus on establishing and growing a business.

To this day we have continued to work with thousands of schools, listening to their needs and improving our services to meet and exceed their expectations.