[Interview] Jeannette Karemera, CEO, Inuma Technology, Rwanda

Jeannette Karemera is the CEO of Inuma Technology, a company in Rwanda that builds new generations of products that are unique, smart and radically helpful.

Could you please tell us more about Inuma Technology?

You will be surprised to hear that Inuma Technology is a faith-based enterprise. My cofounder Dr. David Ndayishimiye, and I have known each other for 14 years. We shared faith, friendship and later decided to build a profitable venture that would change the narrative that faith obliges people to be poor and low key. 

Inuma Technology is located in Kigali, Rwanda, operating since 2017. Our area of focus is smart city solutions with a portfolio starting with:

• Inumastore.com, our e-commerce allowing everyone to buy products from USA stores like Amazon, eBay, Google, or Apple store, and delivery is made worldwide in 10 to 14 days.

• Inuma Smart Home is our idea to automate, to ease repetitive tasks happening in people’s homes such as switching lights, TV, and other home appliances; all those repetitive tasks are put on your smartphone so you don’t have to move around to do them.

• Inuma GPS is our fleet management software allowing everyone to control remotely his vehicles such as fuel consumption, speed, miles traveled, accidents, unnecessary stops, or idling; we made it for car companies to manage their huge fleet of vehicles.

• Inuma self-driving car, our best innovation yet, we are designing and building what we call the best driver ever, it’s still a problem that around 92% of road traffic accidents happening here in Rwanda are caused by human errors such as a driver who is tired, drunk, and distracted. We believe that creating a self-driving car at level 4 of automation can help and reduce such fatalities as innocent lives are always lost, we plan to make a piloting phase soon, as our engineers are wrapping up with the simulation phase.

• Inuma offensive cybersecurity program is our latest release which focuses on offensive cyber security to deliver a comprehensive range of penetration testing services, including data collection, footprinting, vulnerability assessment, cyber forensics, exploitation, and reporting. A variety of other technologies and platforms are all covered by our penetration testing services including but not limited to Web applications, clients server applications, infrastructure, SCADA, ERP systems, mobile applications, wireless, and social engineering.

Within each of our projects, we make sure to deliver them with the latest and greatest innovative technologies on the market.

What would you say gives Inuma technology the competitive edge?

In our perspective, we created Inuma Technology Ltd to be different on the playground, what’s make that difference is that we are building all our portfolio from the ground-up without any third party input, we are emphasizing on collecting and analyzing data to improve our portfolio daily. Thus  this philosophy is allowing us to stay on the steering wheel, so we can explore anything, we  want to always get this first “ Wow” effect, by not just giving our customers what they want but  to always surprise them.

How has the market responded to your services?

Very Impressive, trustworthy, Amazing, Recommendable; are a few comments and reviews we got from our early customers, mainly ones using our e-commerce platform Inumastore.com; Inuma technology Ltd is now reviewed at 4,8 over 5  on Google listing as we speak now. Last year, we have been recognized internationally and partnered with Proxtera, a Singaporean business-to-business (B2B) company, later this year we will start exporting products to this Singaporean company. Achieving such milestones and continuing doing rely on our ability to dive deep into the fundamentals of any business such as a customer-centric approach, delivering a unique value, sticking to our vision, mission, and finally a strong team.

What makes your company unique from other companies which offer similar services?

The magic sauce relies on our vision which is developing smart products that are on an international standard and reliable for everyone. We consider ourselves as a research company, we have spent many years researching, developing products, and finally releasing them once we are sure they are helpful, reliable, and of an international standard. A little anecdote, even though we started official in July 2017, we have been developing and testing our portfolio back in 2010. And the most impressive with this approach is that any new technology is transferred from one project to benefit another one. We are making sure that whenever a customer experiences any of our products, she/he will be inspired by a futuristic, easier, healthier, and more productive lifestyle.

What do you think Inuma Technology needs to grow and prosper?

What we need, we already have it, other is the extra. We have that commitment in our heart, that determination, that strong bond, and  that courage to scale worldwide, We are always eager to learn and improve daily Furthermore, we are seeking on raising funds and expand in other African countries.

What can you say about the changes and developments your company has undergone since its inception?

 I’m saying a lot, the list of our celebrations is endless. We started this company from the ground-up, I remember back in 2017 with our chairman Dr. David Ndayishimiye, we had ideas but we needed a team, money, and an office. We had to pass by our friends, class colleagues, and siblings. It was a challenge after challenge but we learned and improved. Now exactly  5 years later, we are grateful for these courageous people who believed in this company, its mission, and its vision. It’s been 5 years since we found Inuma Technology Ltd, the majors change we made, were to expand our portfolio, define our vision and boost our focus on smart city solutions. At the beginning of July 2017, we were working on e-commerce and fleet management services, one year later we launched our smart home solutions which were featured on Igihe.com, and the next year we moved into a more surprising project, the car self-driving technology. Recently our offensive cybersecurity program has gone public, we were using it before and we are making it available to other enterprises and government entities to secure themselves from cyberattacks. It’s been a journey!. Our e-commerce inumastore.com is now ranked 4,8 over 5 by customers on Google, we have been featured in media like Disrupt Africa, Afrifursa, Afrikan Heroes, and we have gained partners such as Proxtera, the Singapour Fintech Festival, Lenovo, Dell, and HP.

How is competition in your industry and how are you weathering it?

Despite that our portfolio is focusing on smart cities solutions, there is nothing new under the sun, our most active products e-commerce (Inumastore.com) and the fleet management system (Inuma GPS) are the ones facing much competition here on the Rwandan market. You may see other entrepreneurs who embarked on the market like 6 to 7 years ago before us. What we do appreciate about competition is that we are constantly pushing ourselves to innovate, to create, to put data analysis at the core of our business,  to centralize  the customer experience, and finally to improve on existing  products and  services.

What are your company’s plans for 2022?

Growing and growing, that’s the word summing up our plans for 2022. In the last few days, we announced our partnerships with Lenovo, Dell, and HP as an official reseller thanks to the meteoric rise in sales of their products via our e-commerce Inumastore.com and we will end this year exporting made-in-Rwanda products worldwide using the same platform.

With our Inuma cybersecurity team, we are planning to release a  research paper, we have been working on to evaluate the security of private and government IT infrastructures across Africa. The research will be published alongside solutions we developed to tackle security problems we came across. Looking back at our beginning, we believe in a fruitful future.”

Any latest news from Inuma Technology?

6 months ago, precisely on 11th November 2021, we were invited to the Singapore FinTech Festival, one of the world’s largest FinTech Festival. Our deputy executive officer Josue Mugabe discussed Africa's leapfrog into digitalization for small and medium enterprises.”

www.inumatechnology.com