Kigali · 2026
Ingoga R&D · Commerce prototype
vuba
Order anything, from anyone. One app carrying shoppers, boutiques and delivery agents — plus a merchant web dashboard for running the store.
Open the working prototypeThe premise
Most stockwas neverlisted.
Kigali's retail sits in boutiques, pharmacies and market stalls whose inventory has never been digitised, and probably never will be. A conventional marketplace asks every one of them to keep a catalogue accurate before a single order can be placed — which is exactly the work they have no time for.
Vuba tests the inverse. The catalogue is optional: a shopper who does not know where to buy something hands the errand to an agent, who finds it, buys it and delivers it. Merchants who do want a storefront get one they can stand up from a phone, and a dashboard to run it from once orders start arriving.
Four sides, one app
Everyone starts on the same screen.
Shopper
Browses nearby stores, or hands the whole errand to an agent when they do not know where to buy something.
Agent
Accepts two kinds of job from one queue — deliver an existing order, or shop for a customer and then deliver it.
Merchant
Creates a store from the phone in minutes, then runs it from either the app or the web dashboard.
Operator
The platform side: fulfilment routing, payout schedules, and the commission the whole model has to clear.
Mobile app — shopper
Onboard, browse, order, track.
Mobile app — agent & merchant
Accept jobs, deliver, run the store.
Merchant web dashboard
The desk the phone cannot be.
Try it
Ask first. Browse never.
The build has moved past the plates above. The catalogue-first home is gone: the app now opens on one line — what do you need — and you type it or leave a voice note. Vuba routes the ask to a shop that stocks it, which answers with two or three things, or to a human agent who finds it and quotes you. Nothing appears on screen until you have asked for it.
All three sides still share one dataset, so a request you start becomes a job in an agent's queue and an order in a merchant's.
Open the working prototypeDesign system
A prototype that looks like a drawing.
Vuba is drawn in a deliberately unfinished idiom — square corners, hairline borders, dimension ticks at the plate edges, image slots left as marked boxes. Nothing is styled to look shipped, because the point of the round is to argue about the model, not the veneer.
The chrome takes its structure from Carbon (square corners, an 8px spacing scale, one interactive accent) and its density from Blueprint. Every price is stated in RWF and every payout runs through mobile money, so the screens carry the real constraints of the market rather than a generic checkout.
Open questions
What this round is actually testing.
- 01Does a shop-for-me agent beat a catalogue in a market where most inventory was never digitised?Core bet
- 02Can a boutique owner stand a store up from a phone, unassisted, in under ten minutes?Onboarding
- 03Does one agent queue holding both delivery and shopping jobs stay legible under load?Operations
- 04What commission clears agent payouts and mobile-money fees without pricing merchants out?Unit economics
- 05Do merchants keep the web dashboard, or does the phone absorb every job it does?Surface split
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