Imagine never having to chase someone for getting work done again. You say what needs to happen once, the recipient gets messaged, followed up with, kept on track and you only hear about it again if something actually needs your attention. That world might already exist, thanks to a new Zimbabwean platform called Rera.
Rera is a Whatsapp-based follow through assistant by Timothy Sabelanga. So what it does is you make reminders for people on what you would normally forget, or get too busy to do. Rera can then follow up, coordinate with the right people and keep track. It only reaches out to you on matters that need your attention.
“The idea came from noticing how much of everyday life happens through chat, but how much work still remains with the person who started the conversation. You can message someone, “Remember to do this at 7,” but you still have to remember to check whether they did it. I started asking: What if you could hand that responsibility over and move on? That became Rera.” Timothy spoke about the inspiration behind Rera.
I took a look at their website and they managed to provide the platform’s use case in a very brief and specific way. Rera’s use case actually makes sense to me**.** Their site splits it into work, family, errands, friends and home. At work you can use it to chase a colleague who’s gone quiet on work supposed to be done. At home it’s the sibling who never does the one errand you asked for until you’ve reminded them four times.
Rera can also be integrated with home devices that can be used on the internet. These include smart TVs, smart speakers and smart geysers. The home example they show on their site is my favourite though, telling it to make sure the geyser switches off at 10.
As far as my research goes, Rera is the only platform doing this specific thing in Zimbabwe. Of course there’s WappGPT, Siri and Alexa which are somewhat in the similar space. They all have reminder features but it’s how far they go which differentiates them from Rera. While Siri and Alexa may allow you to set reminders for people, they simply do not go out of their way to follow up.
As for WappGPT they fall short on one specific thing that makes Rera what it is. On WappGPT you set reminders for yourself and then the assistant starts to remind you until you do that thing. However, Rera allows you to set reminders for other people. Let’s say you want to remind your coworker to do a certain task you just tell Rera and just like that your coworker won’t rest until they do what they are supposed to.
I tried Rera out to experience its services firsthand. I was able to set a reminder for my younger sister to do her studies at 6pm. The bot was easy to use and by just sending my request as a text like i would to a friend the reminder was set. She even complained about its persistence afterwards.
As for their business model Timothy assured that currently Rera is being opened for free so they can actually see what people would use it for in the real world. However the longer-term model is going to be subscription based.” The basic experience can remain very easy to try, while more advanced capabilities around ongoing follow-up, coordination, integrations and higher usage can become paid features. I don’t want to force a business model before we understand what users value enough to pay for,” Timothy explained his plans for the business model.
Overall Rera can be of use on the day to day basis of people’s lives. The fact that they are WhatsApp based also helps keeping in mind that data prices in Zimbabwe can sometimes be expensive and as per a poll in our WhatsApp Channel a lot of people depend on WhatsApp for collaboration. It’s now up to Rera on how well they will perform in the unpredictable tech market of Zimbabwe.
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