Isaac Twumasi Quantus of Africa Communities Online interviews Tinashe Ngirandi, CEO of IT Geeks. A big part of the mission is to empower Zimbabweans with IT technology that makes sense.

Isaac Quantus: Tell us about IT Geeks, Tinashe.

Tinashe Ngirandi: The IT GEEKS Management Team consists of professionals with proven track record in the Management, Operation and Development of business critical IT environments and systems. ITGEEKS places high value in its people and in return recruit high quality individuals. This reflects in the flexible way we will operate.

The management structure is flat: innovation shall be encouraged and recognized. The culture will be one of empowering individuals to achieve their personal goals. We  seek to  retail and rollout IT HOUSE  brand name shops that will retail  branded Laptops, Net books, digital products, GPS navigation systems, mobile equipment PDAS and Video Gaming systems and accessories.

We also intend to enter into strategic partnership that will deliver on our motto – make technology work and keep it simple. This will drive our main business philosophy to ensure that technology works for Zimbabwe and Technology is simple for Zimbabwe. IT GEEKS will work with both technology and business partners in order to operate an effective IT consultancy and service delivery channel to offer the best of service in  Zimbabwe and the region at large.

Isaac Quantus: How long have you been in business?                                                                                                       

Tinashe Ngirandi: We are a small start-up consulting firm that started 8 months ago with the hope of kick starting our operations with mobile money transfer business for the Zimbabwe market. This has not happened as planned as we have been failing to get funding for the project to date.

Isaac Quantus: What is your niche market?

Tinashe Ngirandi: Customer focused service that seek to simply the service of outsourcing IT services to a company that has human capital with experience to cater for small enterprises all the way  up to large enterprise systems. We feel and know that due to new technologies emerging  cloud computing is a service that has immense  potential to address key challenges facing our society to unlock economic development and also take a key position to benefit from SEACOM’s fiber project that is set to improve internet speeds and technology in the country.

Our services mainly address those challenges with Customer focused consultancy services that address key needs to suit business growth,  IT Hardware& Application solution advise to suit business development, IT Strategy development and Capacity training services to enhance staff skills. These four pillars will drive our motto.

Isaac Quantus: How are you funded? And are you looking for additional funding?

Tinashe Ngirandi: Since we are a start-up  we do seek funding to fully operationalize some of the big ideas that we have  to make it a reality to have key technologies that will help us drive our business to the next level.

Isaac Quantus: What is the latest news about your company?

Tinashe Ngirandi: We seek to  bring about a new service  of  monthly fixed SLA (Service Level Agreement ) consultancy service  per computer for small companies such that they will be able to get IT Support and consultancy services for around 2 USD to 5 USD depending on whether is a desktop , server  or laptop.

Isaac Quantus: How beneficial can your business be to the business community network?

Tinashe Ngirandi: Since our business is a start-up it will give an opportunity to highlight some of the challenges we face as start-ups when one tries to penetrate the market and get noticed in a business environment that shuns  small companies favouring big corporates to do the same work that we can offer at competative prices . Our business model can serve as a point in reference for other small start-up with a simillar setup.

Watch Techistan team catch some more conversation among David Bayer and Gerald Trellis of Zimbabwe Online and Danny Ngai of Jaxtr about IT and running a business in Zimbabwe dated March 1, 2009. Be sure to visit http://www.wegeek.biz/.