East London schoolboy, Ebenezer Odubanjo, presented VeeCee, an innovative online shopping platform for kids and young people, as part of the annual Disrupt 24 Hour Hackathon.
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Kids Want Virtual Currency Too
VeeCee empowers young people to curate their own buying choices by maintaining an online wish-list. It then provides parents a portal through which to make the purchases and gives them final say on whether items are appropriate.
The platform enables young people to earn rewards from their guardians, peers and other adults, for chores and other tasks. These virtual currency (VeeCee) rewards can be used to make secure purchases from the online store, shared with friends, or saved towards wish-list items.
A three-way authentication process requires two adults to approve a transaction before it is accepted. This gives parents more control over how the virtual currency is spent. Alternatively, an adult could directly buy a gift from a niece or nephew’s wish list, making the struggle of finding the right Christmas and birthday presents a thing of the past.
The platform is also supporting TechFugees, enabling VeeCee donations to less privileged kids to get Christmas presents or school books from their wish list.
Disrupt Bedtime
The Disrupt Hackathon is a 24 Hour event preceding the annual Disrupt London conference organized by TechCrunch. Developers and engineers from around the world have just 24 hours to create and present a new product to a panel of expert judges.
Being too young to stay overnight at the Hackathon, Ebenezer and fellow teammate Ashley Frempong, started to brainstorm ideas in the week before the event started. When the idea for VeeCee came about, “We got really hyped about it,” said Ebenezer.
The boys built the service with the rest of their four-man team, who came together 6 months ago, over a shared love for coding in the back of a Barking library, a space called DigiLab and home of the community’s local tech center.
The Future’s Bright
The team intends to keep working on the project, aiming to further improve service flow and user experience. They are also looking at implementing blockchain technologies, to incorporate real crypto-currencies, smart contracts, and distributed systems.
Some of the previous Hackathon entries have seen great success. GroupMe, for example, was created overnight in the competition, and ultimately acquired by Skype for $80m. So, with some help from DigiLab, the group are hoping to create a viable business. They plan a soft-launch with a small community to test and gather feedback.
You can try out the service as it currently stands online here.
Can VeeCee become a viable online shopping platform for kids? Let us know in the comments below!
Images courtesy of techcrunch.com
