Afghanistan
The incubator arm of consultancy firm Gate One has helped to launch a new start-up, Pinga, a peer to peer marketplace for paid favours.
Pinga is a brand new Peer to Peer market place for small task and favours. It's the fastest way to solve a 'small life emergency' and quickly connects you to someone who can help. 'Emergencies' included as examples by the App include the delivery of a bacon sandwich, facing a long queue for a drink, and creating a fancy dress costume last-minute. Gate One, a specialist business transformation consultancy, played a key role in the launch of the App, as the developers raised £60,000 through the firm's Incubator wing in order to build their initial prototype in preparation for their pilot run. The team behind Pinga are kicking off a second round of funding in preparation for the post-Beta testing roll-out.
Supporting Pinga developer Proximise is the latest in a succession of projects the Gate One Incubator has backed, however they are just one of many consultancies attempting to tap into the lucrative start-up market by backing projects. Corporates have increasingly taken to leveraging accelerators & incubators as a means of accessing, the scene. The phenomenon saw as many as 44% of all corporates reportedly using the technique by 2015, and consulting firms have followed suit by ramping up their own innovative potential with a growing number of incubators and venture capital arms.
Capgemini for instance has a wing that invests into FinTechs and helps them grow and match with corporates, KPMG has several Ignition centres globally where it grooms tech ideas, while the likes of McKinsey and BCG have large investment vehicles which take stakes in promising start-ups. It is not just the largest firms either, as Gate One shows, along with the support of we:bo and Tribe by Elixirr and BearingPoint respectively, as they emulate the culture of the industry’s top names, hoping to see returns that boost them in terms of their revenue and corporate infrastructure.
The freelance paid favours market is meanwhile booming both globally and in the UK – with various developers looking to become the Uber of their field. Uber is the world’s fastest growing start-up, and the company – which is competing with established cab-firms to allow freelance drivers to transport passengers for lower prices – was founded in 2009, is today worth $51 billion and has rapidly expanded its operations across sixty countries and 330 cities.
According to founder of Pinga, Michael Goulden, a Principal at Gate One and former KPMG advisor, the app is a great need to fulfull 'small life emergency' market. “This market grew by 118% in the UK alone last year,” before saying of the App, “It's the fastest way to solve a 'small life emergency' and quickly connects you to someone who can help.”
