Keble, Twinku pitch at the inaugural edition of LAUNCH by FCMB

The inaugural edition of LAUNCH by FCMB took place on June 24th at Hub One, a coworking space and innovation hub owned by First City Monument Bank (FCMB), and saw Keble, a prop-tech startup, and Twinku, showcase their products to an enthusiastic audience comprising founders, investors, developers and tech enthusiasts.

Organized by Hub One in partnership with Passion Incubator, the session aims to connect startup founders with an audience of technical and non-technical users i.e. end-users, for the sole purpose of getting valuable feedback on their product before a general release.

According to Lawal Abiodun, Head of Tech Ecosystem and Ventures at FCMB, "Launch by FCMB serves as a platform to foster product-market fit through a critical review of products by real users curated by FCMB. Startups that participate in Launch by FCMB garner invaluable technical and market feedback which greatly impacts their potential to succeed."

Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, Adebisi Borokinni, showcased Keble to the audience. The prop-tech startup is helping Africans create long-term wealth and achieve financial goals by democratizing access to Real Estate for Africans globally.

For as low as N4,150 ($10), Africans can invest in local and international properties. The process is transparent and flexible. According to Adebisi, Keble is building the future of real estate investing!

Keble’s showcase ended with a demo of its web app. It was followed by testing and on-the-spot feedback from the audience, who identified bugs, and issues around design, functionality & usability. These issues will be fixed before a general release of the product, according to Adebisi.

Showcasing Twinku next was Oluwafemi Ademilua, Co-founder of the asset tracking & inheritance-planning platform. Simply, Twinku lets users link all their financial accounts such as bank accounts, cryptocurrency wallets, investment accounts & fintech apps for easy tracking. Users can also use Twinku for inheritance planning.

Among other things, users can also set trigger rules and contacts, allocate assets to beneficiaries of choice and store important information on Twinku, all in a convenient, secure, and confidential manner.

Twinku’s showcase also ended with a demo of its Android app, followed by testing and on-the-spot feedback from the audience.

Oluwafemi said, "LAUNCH by FCMB was a great session, very incredible and helpful, we were able to get real-time feedback from users that were testing the product. A very good platform, I feel like more startups should go through this program to get what users actually feel about their products and give them unbiased feedback that would help them adjust where necessary before they push to the bigger market."

"The energy at LAUNCH was so amazing but the major part of the event I enjoyed was the feedback, it reminds us as founders that we are building for people not for ourselves and this feedback surprisingly if we go back and look at it, and try to implement it, it will take our user base from a 100 to 1000," said Emmanuel Oballa founder and CEO of Keble, corroborating Oluwafemi’s assertions.

LAUNCH is one of the innovative ways First City Monument Bank (FCMB) through Hub One is empowering tech-preneurs and building a robust tech ecosystem. This was reiterated by the Senior Vice President of FCMB, Rolayo Akhigbe while welcoming the participants at the event. "What we do is help drive tech, create a reach for innovations that have the capacity to cause useful impact in the tech space," she said.

The feedback from the audience and the other partners - Aidi Africa, DevCareers and Benjamindada.com - were positive and plans are already underway for the next edition of LAUNCH. Startup founders interested in being a part by way of pitching their soon-to-launch products to an audience in exchange for quality feedback can now register.