Introducing Teka — simple online stores for Ugandan businesses

A simple idea

Today, we are introducing Teka, our first product.

Teka lets small businesses create a simple online store and share it as a link on WhatsApp. You do not need to write code, learn a new technical skill, or hire someone to build a website. You add your products or services, choose how your store should look, and share the link.

That is the basic idea. A small, useful step from showing people what you sell to giving them a place where they can actually see it.

The problem we kept seeing

Uganda has millions of small businesses. There are shops, salons, restaurants, tailors, repair services, tutors, farmers, and people running businesses from home. They are serving real customers every day, but many of them have no web presence at all.

Most of the time, business happens through WhatsApp and word of mouth. Someone asks, “What do you sell?” The answer is usually a series of photos sent in a chat. Maybe there is a price somewhere in the conversation. Maybe the customer has to ask which items are still available. If they want to share the business with a friend, they forward the same photos again.

WhatsApp is useful, but a chat is not a store. There is no single link to share. There is no structure for a customer to browse. And there is no clear way for the business owner to know what is working. They are left guessing whether people saw the products, which items caught their attention, or whether anyone followed up after visiting.

This is not because business owners do not care about presentation. They are busy running the business. They need tools that fit into the way they already work, not another complicated system to manage.

What Teka does

Teka gives a business a clean, professional store link that the owner controls. It can be shared in a WhatsApp status, sent directly to a customer, added to a social media profile, or printed as a QR code.

When a customer opens the store, they can see products with clear photos and prices. They can browse without searching through an old conversation. When they are ready to buy, they tap “Order on WhatsApp” and continue the conversation with the merchant in the place both of them already know.

There is no attempt to replace that conversation. WhatsApp is already where many transactions begin. Teka simply gives the conversation a better starting point.

For the merchant, Teka also shows what is happening. They can see who visited the store and who tapped to order on WhatsApp. Those are simple numbers, but they are useful numbers. They help answer questions that were previously based on guesswork: Are people finding the store? Are they looking at the menu? Are they taking the next step?

Why this matters here

Small businesses are not a side story in Uganda. They are the economy people encounter every day. They employ family members, support households, and make it possible for communities to get what they need close to home.

Giving these businesses a web presence, even a simple one, unlocks a kind of visibility many of them have never had. A boda guy looking for a mechanic could find the mechanic’s Teka store and see what services are available before calling. A parent could browse a school supplies shop before making the trip. Someone new to a neighbourhood could find a nearby salon, restaurant, or repair person without relying on one introduction at a time.

We do not think this is mainly about helping businesses “go digital.” That phrase can make ordinary business sound like a special technology project. For us, it is about being findable. If you have something useful to offer, people should have a straightforward way to see it.

What is included

Teka starts with four store templates, each made for a different kind of business:

• Catalogue for shops and businesses with products to display.
• Menu for restaurants, cafes, and food businesses.
• Services for salons, repair businesses, consultants, and other service providers.
• Single for a focused offering, such as one product, event, or service.

Every store includes WhatsApp ordering, so customers can move from browsing to asking questions or placing an order without learning a new checkout process. Merchants get analytics to understand visits and order taps. They can also create QR codes for signs, packaging, receipts, or a physical shop counter.

Custom branding is included too. A business should be able to use its own name, colours, photos, and voice. The store should feel like an extension of the business, not a page that belongs to an unfamiliar platform.

What comes next

This first release is deliberately focused. We want to learn from the people using Teka and improve the parts that matter in daily business.

Over time, we plan to add mobile money payments, SMS reminders, and more templates for different types of businesses. These will be useful only if they make things simpler, so we will take our time and build them around real needs.

Teka is our first product, and this is our first step. We built it for the shop owner with a phone full of product photos, the salon owner answering the same questions every day, and the restaurant owner who wants customers to see the menu before they arrive.

A store link will not solve every problem. But it can make a business easier to find, easier to understand, and easier to contact. We think that is a good place to begin.