Twiva is an AI-driven, influencer-powered social commerce platform designed to bridge the gap between micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and digitally skilled youth. By leveraging social media influencers, Twiva enables brands to seamlessly market and sell goods, democratizing market access and driving return on investment (ROI) for SMEs.

Addressing Key Challenges

MSMEs in developing nations often face challenges such as limited digital skills, lack of trust in online transactions, and the absence of user-friendly platforms. Concurrently, over 12.5% of Kenyan youth face underemployment despite their digital savviness. Twiva addresses these gaps by creating dignified income opportunities for influencers while enabling SMEs to scale effectively without costly marketing investments.

Innovative AI Solutions

Twiva’s key differentiation lies in its proprietary AI, which automates influencer-product matching, content creation, product listing across influencer e-shops, shoppable content scheduling, and provides Influencer AI Agents to support creators with their work. This ensures efficiency and scalability while offering guided paths to purchase with embedded payment gateways.

Vision and Impact

Twiva’s vision is to empower Africa’s MSMEs and youth, aiming to impact at least 1 million lives in the next three years, fostering sustainable growth and economic transformation across the continent.

Leveraging Azure’s OpenAI GPT Models

Twiva utilizes Azure’s OpenAI GPT models to power core features of its platform, including an AI-driven shoppable content creation tool. This tool automates the creation of captions, product descriptions, hashtags, and images tailored to brand goals and audience preferences, leveraging influencer data like engagement rates and audience behavior to maximize conversions. Advanced scheduling capabilities automate social media calendars for influencers and brands, optimizing post timing across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube to enhance engagement and reach.

Future Innovations

Looking ahead, Twiva plans to harness Azure OpenAI’s predictive analytics to forecast sales trends, product demand, and performance metrics. These insights will empower SMEs and influencers with data-driven strategies, optimize marketing spend, and identify high-potential collaborations. Twiva also aims to build Influencer AI Agents that help influencers be more efficient with mundane tasks such as content creation, responding to direct messages, tracking content performance, creating and sending reports to clients, and supporting customers placing orders on creators’ storefronts. With Azure’s robust tools, Twiva aims to scale its AI capabilities, driving sustainable growth and impact across African markets.

Product Roadmap

Twiva’s product roadmap focuses on utilizing cutting-edge technologies to enhance its platform and provide exceptional value to MSMEs and influencers. Key innovations planned for the future include:

• AI-Powered Features: Introduction of Influencer AI Agents to automate routine tasks such as content creation, audience engagement, and reporting. Product-influencer and campaign-influencer matching algorithms will optimize collaboration outcomes. Dynamic AI-powered rate cards will allow influencers to competitively price their services based on market trends and campaign specifics.
• Livestream Selling Tool: Leveraging Azure Media Services for high-quality live video encoding, adaptive bitrate streaming, and real-time delivery across multiple platforms. NVIDIA’s Deep Learning and Computer Vision technologies will enable product recognition in live-streamed videos, displaying details such as pricing and stock availability in real-time.
• Enhanced Customer Interaction: Integration of Azure Communication Services (ACS) to facilitate real-time messaging between influencers, SMEs, and their audiences.
• Data-Driven Insights: Integration of Power BI to provide advanced analytics dashboards offering insights into key metrics such as audience demographics, engagement levels, and sales performance.

Strategic Collaboration with Microsoft

Twiva sees significant long-term strategic opportunities in collaborating with Microsoft, particularly in addressing youth unemployment across Africa. By integrating Microsoft’s AI for Good programs and skill development platforms like Microsoft Learn with Twiva’s social commerce platform, Twiva can equip young people with digital skills and empower them with opportunities to earn consistent incomes through dignified work. This partnership aligns with both organizations’ missions to create economic impact and improve livelihoods.

Target Audience

Twiva primarily serves a young, tech-savvy demographic aged 18–35 with an active social media presence. This audience is at the forefront of the growing trend in social commerce and plays a crucial role in influencing the purchasing decisions of consumers. These individuals—predominantly influencers—help MSMEs market and sell products online, leveraging their social platforms to drive engagement and conversions. The secondary customer segment consists of MSMEs across various industries, including fashion, beauty, arts, home appliances, and electronics. These businesses, typically with over a year of operation, are focused on expanding their digital presence and reaching new markets.

Through this collaboration, Twiva aims to harness Microsoft’s cutting-edge technologies to propel social commerce in Africa, creating job opportunities, enhancing business growth, and fostering long-term economic prosperity.