Wireless charging mirroring Wi-Fi adoption in public places

Power is a building block of today’s digital economy but is one that has been overlooked unlike Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other forms of connectivity which have been turned into a digital commodity considering power has been in existence since the 1800s.

Chargifi, a futuristic solution that provides wireless charging in public facilities such as restaurants, boardrooms, airports, hospitals to name a few was brought about when CEO Dan Bladen and his wife vacationed in South America for six months and found themselves making very strategic decisions about the places they visited, based on the availability of power sockets.

“We would peek in through the front of coffee shops, restaurants, and look for power plugs, and then made a decision about where we ate that night, or had coffee based on that,” said Bladen. “It got me thinking, if we’d been traveling a few years earlier, we would have gone in looking to see if that location had Wi-Fi. In 2012, that was back when we were traveling, Wi-Fi was much, much more ubiquitous.

The solution is installed discreetly underneath table surfaces and allows customer to power up their mobile phones by use of a token.

Chargifi customers can place Chargifi wireless charging ‘keys’ around the venue for their customers to plug into their phones. All they have to do is download the app and connect their device to begin charging. Alternatively, if their phone has wireless capabilities built-in, they can just download the app and begin charging, without connecting to a Chargifi ‘key’.

The Chargifi app will tell consumers where their nearest charging spot is, whether that’s a cafe, restaurant or bookshop.

Algocent, authorized Chargifi distributor for Sub-Saharan Africa is headquarted in Nairobi and will be branching out to Uganda and Rwanda soon.

“Our wireless charging solutions does a lot more than provide power when needed it also grants business owners access to customer behavior insights” says Daniel Kamau, Director at Algocent.

A business owner can easily monitor the performance of their wireless charging spots from their laptop. They receive alerts when a spot is down to initiate the self-repair remotely. This reduces the need for expensive servicing and ensures customers enjoy world-class service.

Wireless charging makes use of an electromagnetic field to transfer energy between two objects and therefore liberates device owners from the need to find an electric socket to charge up.

Whilst a client is charging their device, there is an opportunity for the business to market different functions of their business. For instance a restaurant could have the patrons share a brand video on social media before accessing the power.