We built Rucove to be the host magic strives on; building agro-economic opportunity anyone can connect to, improving agro-export and import in terms of quality, quantity, trust and sustainability from Africa to Europe and down to other continents. Solving the chicken and egg problem is one of the complex challenges many entrepreneurs face. We've been exploring ways to tackle this until we learned about Facebook Hackathon.
We started making plans on the best ways to leverage Facebook Messenger to scale smarter. This led us to a simple way to do that; Build a chatbot.
What Rucove bot does is simple; Help sign up Agro sellers. Showcase Agro sellers produce at any stage (Growing, near harvest, harvesting, in stock) to buyers. Connect agro-buyers to sellers of their choice right on Facebook.
We listed out the steps Rucove users often follow to either buy or sell and possible experiences they are likely to explore. Our bot was written based on the steps and experiences we listed out. For every step or experience a user fulfills, there is a predefined response from the bot.
This didn’t come off easily, limited power supply was a big challenge for us. This forced us to look for other means of generating electricity so we can deliver before the deadline.
We started learning Python the same day we read about Facebook Hackathon. We chose Python because we planned to work with PyTorch in future, and monetize.
By engaging with Hourspent Fellows on this, ideas were coming from all around the corner. This helped us move a bit faster even though all fellows started learning Python the same day they were told about the hackathon.
Overall, this has brought us one step closer to our aim which is to be the digital map of the global Agro economy connecting agro opportunities and empowering millions of entrepreneurs from Africa to the world unlocking their passions and talents to become agro entrepreneurs.
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