New product offering:
The Meshie’s have been calling and we are finally able to answer. Many of you have asked about what’s been going on behind the scenes at BlockMesh, understandably so. If you’re in the Telegram group and have been following us on Twitter, you’ll know our recent focus has been on the token POS retail integration.
This will allow digital tokens and cryptocurrency to be accepted as a new and alternative form of payment throughout Africa at the POS points of a very popular retail chain. However, this is no easy feat — especially for a 2-year old startup based in the bottom of Africa — and the integration process has taken longer than we all would’ve liked, due to many mitigating factors, most of which are out of our hands.
That said, we’re still very much focused on completing our mission of bringing cost-free communications to the world and our hardware solutions are integral in seeing this happen. Last year, we completed our MeshEx Booster prototype, and believe it is one of the most advanced network range boosters of its type. But, we need to get it into the hands of our community to prove it.
This too is no simple feat, especially with limited cash flow. This is why we’re proud and excited to announce that over the past 6 months we’ve been in talks with local and international device manufacturers to take over the production of the MeshEx Booster as well as a new suite of never-before-mentioned BlockMesh IoT devices.
The new product offering will allow us to approach a broad range of global problems right away, instead of focusing only on low-cost communications networks. Through the latest developments in IoT device manufacturing, we now have the ability to bring many much-needed solutions to the market that can help people in agriculture, tourism, location-based tracking, disaster relief zones, life-or-death situations, and many more.
The recent natural disasters (Cyclones Kenneth and Idai) which affected and continue to disrupt our neighbours Mozambique have helped us expedite the decision to open up our product offering. With a lack of easy access to communications, medical assistance and exact locations of friends and family — we knew we had the ability to help, and better prepare for future events like this. So, we are working on, and hope to have prototypes and the accompanying digital monitoring platform ready for our first Panic & Disaster Relief (name not decided) product within the next couple of months. More specific details will be released in the coming weeks as we share more updates and interviews.
To be clear, our mission remains to build a cost-free P2P communications channel on the Mesh Network, backed by the BMH token. But, we feel that there are more important issues that we should aim to solve first, especially in the developing world.
Our combination of software, hardware, the blockchain, as well as our ability to act in an area that needs these solutions the most — Africa — is driving this diversification of strategy and product offering.
Africa Utility Week:
In other news, two of our senior team members, Matthew and Jason, visited the Africa Utility Week at the Cape Town International Convention Centre. Here they met key players in the power, water, and utility businesses and discussed the opportunities available for the internet of things in this space, especially with regards to the new product offering we are working on. Besides the Panic & Disaster Relief range, we are working on offering agricultural sensors, utility readers and management tools, location-based tracking beacons, asset-security locks and much more.
Team:
Last but not least, we’re also excited to announce a change in our senior team structure. Our Co-founder and creator of BlockMesh, Bjorn, is shifting away from his role as CEO to that of CTO so that he can better focus on new product design, software systems development and innovation within the company. We thank him for his vision and drive in starting BlockMesh and look forward to his continued assistance in our new product development.
Matthew Schulz, our Head of Operations, is taking over the role of Managing Director.
Matthew’s experience in building startups, team management, and key project management skills will help us execute our goals in the next phase of the roadmap and we welcome him and wish him success in the new phase of BlockMesh’s development.
We’re looking forward to this chapter of the BlockMesh story and appreciate your support in helping us to achieve our goals.
As always, find out more by joining our Telegram group and send any questions or comments to us on Twitter or visit our website.
