While there were once a number of specific areas where new technologies seemed to have failed to deliver real, lasting and significant change, today they have gradually become an integral part of all aspects of our lives, both professional and personal. Nelleos, an electronic business card designed by a young Beninese entrepreneur, is one of those advances made to share personal data at the touch of a button.
Now there’s no need to carry around dozens of cumbersome business cards! A solution has now been found to overcome not only the exorbitant expense of designing the cards but also the burden of carrying them around. His name is Nelleos. “Nelleos is a connected business card that allows us to share personal information just by touching the phone of our interlocutor with the card,” said its designer, Boniface Ebo, a 24-year-old entrepreneur and digital marketing consultant.
The noble initiative started from one of his misadventures where, having lost the business card that had just been given to him by one of his potential investors, Boniface Ebo missed the opportunity to be financed for a project worth approximately 40 million. Boniface Ebo has often had these kinds of experiences. And the sum of these situations motivated the digital marketing consultant to design the new jewel.
So, compared to other cards that use QR codes, Nelleos works with the NFC technology found in all phones. “It’s a chip that we integrate into our cards and in this chip we program all the information that the user wants to pass on. We just put the card on the caller’s phone and the person’s information is automatically recorded,” he says.
Designed in Benin, Nelleos, although it still has a bright future ahead of it, is having a hard time making its way into the daily lives of Beninese people because “the environment is not very receptive in terms of technology,” says its author, before adding: “But with time, we’ll get there.
The young entrepreneur also promises to work further on Nelleos by displaying, for example, the photo and biography on the smart card in order to succeed in the challenge not only in Benin but also in the sub-region.
Now, instead of sharing a hundred cards a month, for example, you’ll only need one to send your details to anyone you want. “More than 7 billion cards are thrown away every year and more than 60,000 square kilometres of trees are cut down. In a few years’ time, we want to make it easier to make contacts and turn every meeting into a relationship that counts and that leads to good opportunities in the long run,” he said.
Boniface Ebo, 24, an entrepreneur and digital marketing consultant, has also designed other solutions such as Missèbo, a sales site where items that have already been used once are sold.
