TinX

Tell us a little about yourselves

Our names are Sunny David, Tonye Waribo, and Raphael Ryan Paul.

Sunny David: I am 28 years old and from Akwa Ibom State. I am a virtual reality (VR) software developer focused on Android phones, and I’m a cofounder of TinX.

Tonye Waribo: I work as a Frontend and VR web developer. I am a co-founder of TinX.

Raphael Ryan Paul: I am 23 years old and from Akwa Ibom State. I work as a developer for Oculus Rift. I am a co-founder of TinX.

What does your start-up do?

Raphael: TinX is Virtual Reality Educational software. TinX is an acronym for ‘Technology in Natural Experience’. We develop VR apps to create more practical experiences for the education sector.

What inspired your start-up?

Sunny: We were inspired by the low level of practical experiences in the educational sector. We found out that most secondary schools in this area lack the adequate facilities, labs, and equipment needed to give the students a practical experience of what was being taught. So we came up with the idea of TinX, to build a virtual world where these practical experiences of any subjects could be gained with low risk.

What stage is your start-up at?  

Raphael: We haven’t started selling products yet. We are still in the development stage. We hope that by January 2020 we can get our first product out, so that we can start making sales.

Why do you want to start up your business?

Tonye: Basically, as developers we look at problems and use technology as the tool to solve it. As individuals in the society, we have seen a defect in the education system and we felt responsible to create a solution for it. We see this as a job; we may not be working under organisations but we are working to create solutions for our society.

Why did you apply for the Ken Jnr Award for Innovation?

Sunny: We saw the Ken Jnr. Award for Innovation as a great opportunity for us to get funds and the needed equipment. We needed the funds and equipment because what we had wasn’t good enough quality. We saw this award as a source of funding for us.

We opted to join the incubation programme, because we are certain of the gains with regards to the exposure, technical know-how, skills and knowledge that we are currently lacking. We are sure that at the end of the programme, we would have gotten the needed skills and knowledge for business success.

For TinX, as a team, we hope to be recognized as the first VR team in Nigeria to come up with a solution for the education sector and to set the standard as developers so that others can follow. Since this is a new market, we went into it to be the pioneers in Nigeria and Africa.

What do you hope to do with your business after you graduate from the Hub?

Sunny: We’d like to thank the Ken Saro-Wiwa Innovation Hub for this opportunity to be part of the second cohort of the incubation programme. We hope that with this support and opportunity, we will be able to produce our software for people in the society to use. Thank you very much.

Tonye: Our marketing strategy is to bring out our ‘minimum viable product’ (MVP) for early adopters before the incubation programme ends, and we believe that doing this will bring the needed funds and revenue. We also plan to introduce teaching sessions for people interested in VR.

Raphael: It is really a privilege to be part of this programme, we hope to impact lives along the way.

Supporting TinX with the best start…

The Ken Jr Award for Innovation is a 6-month ‘incubation’ programme for aspiring tech entrepreneurs, providing a grant, free work-space and office amenities at the Ken Saro-Wiwa innovation hub, training, mentorship support, and soft skills to four teams of people who have a business idea and minimum viable product that they want to take to market.