Phillip Kalinda is a dynamic techie with an unmatched passion for using growth, and bringing about experiences to people through his products. As Team Lead at Tambula Concepts, Phillip oversees the Corporate Quiz and digital adverts at the company.
I did have a chat with the passion-driven Phillip over coffee. On there, we discussed his ambitions, the humble beginnings of his now popular quiz, and future plans. Read On:
My good people, welcome back once again to Mugibson Meets. This time, I’ve been joined by a very interesting guest, a young man doing amazing things in our entertainment and social connections. But also, education that we shall get to know in the next minutes of interacting with him. On Mugibson Meets, we profile people who are making a difference and doing an incredible job in entertainment, lifestyle, business, and pretty much everything. So, welcome with me, Phillip Kalinda from Tambula Concepts.
On who Phillip is:
Yes, thank you. Phillip is my name and it’s a pleasure to be here.
Tambula Concepts and how the Tambula Corporate Quiz works:
So, it’s a pretty long story, it’s not as straightforward as it sounds. But, at the moment, what we are doing is we are offering people a chance to connect in a new way like they’ve never connected before. What I see it now as is a chance for people, friends, colleagues, and co-workers to just come together, come to a social place or space, and basically compete or play games together. Because if you notice right now, when friends or even a couple, when they go on a date, two, three minutes later, they’re on their phones and everyone doing their own thing. So, I felt we were taking that away. You could still use your phone now, but instead with your colleagues and you’re playing games. So, the idea is people come to our spaces and they form a group. They give their group a name, they use one phone and we start giving them questions.
It’s a bit highly intense because we give you a limited time. We give you 15 seconds usually and in those 15 seconds, you’re supposed to read the question and pick out an answer in the four options. It’s a bit more complicated. And the idea is when we’re setting these questions, we try to trick them. But far from that, back to what I was saying, the idea is to have high pressure. So, it’s like we’re in a group right now and the question has come and in those 15 seconds, you have to figure out what the answer is. So, we’ve come to learn that it creates excitement, it forms new relationships around people. Sometimes may not go very well. For example, if Mugi gave me the wrong answer when I was assisting, it was A and his assistant was B. And then the answer shows it’s B, I would look at him in some type of way of like, yo, I told you. Or if you pass, you’re like, yo, you see, I told you guys. Exactly. So, in that, people have to learn new ways of connecting or even just they get to learn a lot together or they get to discover their strengths as well. So, I realized, for example, football round came on, Mugi knows a lot about football. If we switchto the movies… You know the person; you have to follow up. Exactly, something of that sort. So, we’ve learned that it creates that connection among people and we believe that’s a new way of connecting. We know that you can just come out to your squad and you’re like, guys, let’s go win something.
The Win for SMEs:
Our concept comes down to also not just playing games. We try to marry so many wins. We want you, the person participating, to learn and also win prizes. And then also, we married it with entrepreneurship that we support SMEs or small businesses. So, the idea with that is we partner with different businesses on every session and we call them sponsors. And the idea of a sponsor is to give out prizes. So, we do five normal rounds where we give out shots courtesy of the host. The host venue. The host venue, exactly. We give out shots for the first five rounds to different groups and then the overall winner can take a bottle of whiskey or a pitcher or if you’re Muslim, you can get food, wings pizza, whatever you’re comfortable with. Then, after that, we support the business as well where we can tailor questions around the business’s products and services or just ask questions related to what they do, in line with that industry.
Tambula Corporate Quiz’s Humble Beginnings and Love for Computers:
What we arrived at right now is an idea that dates back to eight years ago. So, eight years ago, I had an idea where I would want people to play from home. The idea was for a TV show where Mugi is at home on a Sunday chilling. He knows there’s this TV show where a TV presenter is going to come, say, okay guys, prepare, we’re going to start the games right now. And he pulls out his phone and the questions start flowing on the TV. Question one comes in 15 seconds. The faster you answer, the more points you get, that whole gist. Yeah, that was the whole idea. But this was again eight years ago.
I have an email that I sent out to a developer friend eight years ago. I was not good at developing. But fast forward to two years ago, I took a break from drinking. I was having challenges managing my alcohol. But when I took that break, I came down to having a lot of free time. And I had all these ideas that I always wanted to develop. And I also realized how I had developed the skills. I had gotten my masters in software development. I had done so many projects. So, I was like, but I still have my personal projects that I want to do. Not focusing on profit making or what. Let me just attempt to do them.
My love for computers, just taking you further back into history, started from when I was a kid. My dad used to buy newspapers every day. But when he would buy them, he would have a whole stash of them just there in the house. But I would look at them, I’m like, people need these to like wrap mandazi and samosas. I could sell this to someone. So, I’d get those newspapers and I would sell like 10 of them for 100 shillings. And as long as I made like 2,000 shillings, I would get that money and immediately run to a computer cafe just to like play about with a computer. I was just so fascinated by this computer thing where I would send MugI a message like miles away from me and then I’d send a message and he’d receive it, and he’s able to reply. It just fascinated me. I’m like, how does this machine do this? Like Yeah, so that’s how I fell in love with computers. And in my O’level. I was like always in the computer lab, the computer teacher was like my best friend, exactly. So it was, it dates back to that. My passion for computers started from there.
So, all this quiz stuff is just a by-product. But again, back to what you were saying, the idea of quiz, when I decided to pursue my ideas, that was one of them. So, I started, I was like, okay, I want to do this for TV, but how, where do I start from? Then when I reviewed the ideas, I was like, okay, we could start with schools, but then in schools, they don’t allow smartphones, what can I do? So, I was like, I can create a buzzer of some sort. So, I created a buzzer. It took me some time to assemble. We had 3D print stuff, and connect wires here and there. How do we recharge that device? It has to have A, B, C, D, things of that sort. So, I created something like that. Over time, I created like 15 pieces of them, and they were there, and then we were like, okay, let’s attack schools. But, of course, there’s all this bureaucracy in schools. So, yeah, that was also a challenge in itself. We tried to approach schools, but it didn’t work.
So, again, I ended up with a product that was just sitting on what? On my shelf. But then the people that I work with in the office had recognized its value. So, I realized, okay, let’s start by playing in the office. So, in the office, every Friday, I was like, let me put some form of reward to entice my friends to come and play this game that I created. So, we had a TV in the office. We’d plug in the laptop, give everyone a buzzer, and then we’d start playing.
The week after, like 3 rounds, we’d get like a KFC meal on me, something of that sort from me. So, it became a culture in the office. So, it became kind of created and it became like our team-building platform. Like that’s how we’d build our team. Like, come Thursday evening, everyone was scaring the other, yo, tomorrow I’m going to show you guys what’s up. Yeah, exactly, yeah, I’m going to show you, yeah, something of that sort.
So, it started out as a culture like that. So, we’d have friends who would visit the office and participate with us. So, some were like, yo, why don’t you take this thing to bars? Like bars have all these quiz things happening. “You could take this and, I don’t know, generate some money from it.” I was like, you know what, why not? So, we approached several bars that were running quizzes at that time. And to be honest, like any new thing, we’re not really welcomed with opening arms. So, trust me, it was at that moment when I approached the first location and I approached the quiz master of that place and he was very negative towards it. He told me this thing can’t work, whatever. We do things a certain way around here. It could have put me down and I’ll be honest, it sort of did. Yeah, then another week came. You try to explain to them the feeling it generates for you when you’re in the office but they’re still not getting it. So I was like, what am I going to do? So the first two weeks, I first gave up-ish. And then I was like, you know what, again friends would come. They’re like, “yo, take this thing to the bar, it’s lit” you get? So again, I visit another location. So the second place I visited, they’re a bit receptive but they’re like, we’ll give you one round. Yeah, so they gave me one round.
So okay, they’re like, okay, we appreciate it a bit. Then I’m like, okay, let’s get the money bit. Can you give me a small dividend? I give you, I train you on how to use the product and whatever. Exactly. Again, though, okay, I wouldn’t say they were negative towards it but they were like, okay, we already have a huge expense on the quiz night. We can’t really afford to add anything more to eat and we’re already doing things a certain way.
On how the Tambula Corporate Quiz Got Its First Official Home:
So again, I sort of gave up again. But then fast forward to like one month down, I was like, there’s this place that I hung out where, I mean, they don’t have a quiz or anything but it’s an opportunity for me to just start from there. Like, let me just start from there. And that place is Terrace. I used to hang out there a lot. I like their cocktails. I like the crowd. It sort of met my energy. So I’m like, I go to Terrace a lot. I’ve made so many friends there. I know how the whole space operates. So I was like, let me start from there. So I look for the owner of the place. I get down a meeting with him. I’m like, yo, take a risk on me. I trust in this product. I know you’re not into this business. You don’t have like a quiz night, but just take a risk on me. One night, whatever happens after that night, we’ll see, and since then it was history. But just to give you again how again we moved to Terrace. So the first night starts, we come with our buzzers.
We’ve advertised. But even after a lot of advertising, it’s mostly our friends who came to support us. And yeah, we managed to gather enough groups, at least 15 groups at that time. So we got like, we hired a projector. We put it there. It was all like a sketchy setup, but we managed. I mean, the people that came, they had a hell of a time, like a blast. And when I look back in that moment, I looked around and I’m like, yo, this thing can actually work. You get like, so yeah, we started first night, second night, third night. Yo, it was like, we reached a point where, so Terrace was the only place where we were doing this. Yeah. And people, of course, naturally, when they hear about new things happening, you know Uganda, new things. Yeah, FOMO. So post hearing about this night, this corporate quiz night, that’s what we called it, corporate quiz night. They’re like, there are some games that happen every Wednesday.
You should check them out. So we became like a go-to. So we moved away now from the buzzers because when we had 15 buzzers, the groups had grown. The demand was now more, we reached a point where we had like 30 groups. We were filling up the entire Terrace. We had to keep hiring furniture to accommodate everyone. It became serious. Like we just knew every Wednesday, it was going to be a blast again. Yeah, so that became now a culture, Terrace. And then we realized, okay, Terrace is getting too full. Most of our loyal customers were complaining.
“I come, I don’t have where to sit. I’m not getting my drinks on time.” Again, because it was just too much. The numbers were beyond what we expected. Exactly, they were beyond what we expected. We didn’t believe we’d fill up the entire parking and the entire street all the way up to British Council. Like cars were just, every Wednesday by like 6, 7, there was nowhere to sit. So yeah, that’s how we started. We moved away from the buzzers. We did a mobile application.
Because you’re a developer. Exactly, yeah, I’m a developer. And I had to look for growth as well. Like how do we accommodate more groups again? So yeah, we decided to create a web app. You come with a group. You just use one phone. You create an account. Next time when you come, just log into your account and you get something of that sort. Exactly, yeah. So with people’s phones, it was much easier to take care of their phones than the buzzers. So yeah, that’s how we grew. And then we realized, okay, Terrace is not enough space now.
On Expanding and adding more Tambula Corporate Quiz Host Venues:
We need to expand. So that’s how we came to open up Shisa Nyama in Bogorlovi. Our model was, number one, focus on supporting small businesses, which was through the sponsorships that I told you. Also geographical, keep it geographical. In the locations people frequent. Exactly, now if I’m giving an example, Terrace was covering Kololo. When we went to Shisa Nyama, we were trying to tap into Bugolobi market. Exactly, yeah. Then we opened up Olives as well to tap into the Naguru market. Something of that sort. Later we went into Muyenga, Zara Gardens, wherever. Now we are in Clamato to cover Bukoto. But all those, what would assure the bar owners that when you’re with us, we don’t want to put on you competition. Like if Terrace is in Kololo, we don’t want to go to your neighbour. We assure you of the monopoly you get. So that also gave us a it allows the bar owner to be confident that it’s just new with this product in this area. It allows them to exercise the monopoly you get.
On how they have been able to attract more venues:
We again try to pride ourselves because when I was starting out, like I told you, it was just about collecting the least amount of money you can collect and have like 100 bars all over Uganda giving you that figure and then maybe you can make money. Exactly. But then my fiancée is like, Philip, no, don’t do that because she saw me struggling. I was going to the Gardens Najjera, to market each. She would be over there in each bar stressing a lot and all of them… Yeah, it was exactly not as good. So she just told me, Philip, just focus on what you have right now, Build that, People will hear about it. People will know about it.
And through that, at our location, be like, hey, yo, how can we get that service? Yeah, how can we also do it at our location, something of that sort. And of course, when we’d go there, we’d not assure them that we’re going to assure you instant success, but we’d just tell you for us, as Tambula, we pride ourselves on our product. It’s the product that does the speaking. The minute someone comes into contact, like Mugi has been playing since November, and he’s been a constant, constant participant. For us, that’s what we pride ourselves in.
The idea is just give people nice, interesting questions every week to keep them engaged and motivated. Next week, they’re like, you know what, let’s come again. If it’s not about the questions, the sponsors you get. When you have crazy sponsors like Blankets and Wine, or you’re giving people vouchers to go to Chaninga Lodge, you get things like that. It’s a bit enticing.
On Phillip’s team he works with:
Our team is composed of several people. The idea is, okay, me, I’m the technical person. The software and whatnot, that’s what I’m good at, but when it comes to things like socializing or hosting people or inviting, knowing so many people, or even marketing, that is not my strong suit. Personally, I’m not big on social media. If you check on Twitter, I’m not on Twitter. Instagram, I stopped using it two years ago. Most of the social media platforms, you are not really going to find me. I realize I have to get into bed with people who are good at that.
That’s why, for example, at Terrace I had to work with Miss Cherry on Top because she was already doing karaoke at Aleph, exactly, and it was a success. That’s why she’s been our host at Terrace. She knows how to mobilize people, and get things going. Her job was, for example, get people to come. My job was entertain them. When the two work, you have success.
Of course, I’m not a proper emcee, although sometimes I do it. Sometimes I step in for my hosts and emcees. Again, I had to work with people who are good at that. The idea was, don’t call yourself a quiz master. Just call yourself an emcee. Look at yourself as an emcee. Just crack your jokes. Do something. Something of that sort. That was the whole idea. I had to partner with people with different skill sets and mindsets. You realize now, in that sense, now, that is just one. When we started out, I was putting in most of the questions.
I had another colleague who would help me. We were just two guys. Again, I realized that’s not my strong suit. When it comes to things like animation. I had to look for people again who know different things about different things. We call them authors. We have authors, people who have their own logins into the system. Every week, one has a requirement to do 10 quizzes. Another one has to do five. Another one, three. Even me, sometimes, I pitch in. Also, the host can pitch in on like the music rounds, and things of that sort. Honestly, I reached the point when we were just starting out where I was mentally fatigued.
I had to improve the software and come up with new games. Like I told you, it’s not just a quiz in there. We have Word Rush, we can show you videos of movies and you’ll figure it out. I had to figure out how to put all that in. Fast fingers, come up with new games. Music rounds, things of that sort. So, I had to do that. Then I had to put in the questions. I had to come on-site and set up. You get like… It was a lot of work, yeah. It was overwhelming. So, I was like, you know what? Let me get people who have more time to do the authoring of the quizzes. So, for example, I made Mugi at Olive’s and he’s like, hey, yo, I want a round on banking. I don’t want to rush and do it. I’ll just text one of the authors and like, yo, do a round on banking. Something of that sort. So, that’s at least how we’ve been operating. I pitch in sometimes but I try not to focus on that lately.
We reached a point where… So, for example, at the start, the product was on fire. Like, everyone wanted it. I reached a point where we had Pizza Connection. We had like five or six locations running in a week. And then also we introduced the live games. By the way, guys, if you don’t know about the live games, so this is what happens on Sunday from 3 pm. Yeah, from 3 pm. So, how they work is we have a WhatsApp group. In case you’re interested, you can DM or send a message on the Tambula Corporate Quiz socials.
So, what happens is we do log in with our usual account details for… And then we do session number 44. Yeah, it’s called 44, yes. So, then they give us the various sessions. However, the beauty of it is you play from right where you are. And I’m happy they can tell us more about the Fridays because they are exciting and extremely popular. Yeah, so, when you say all the live games are on Friday and the idea was, we wanted to partner with alcohol brands so that they could give us alcohol to give people on Friday to like party.
Yeah, like pre-game. You get alcohol from UBL either a crate or Uganda Waragi or something like you enjoy. So, that was the concept initially. But then, of course, those partnerships take time and whatever. So, initially, I had to pitch in with some of my profit and put it on the line. Like, okay, we’re giving out money to the win of every round, something of that sort. Sometimes, if we had extra gifts like tickets to a show, whatever. It was a day from the week. Exactly, yeah. So, it was happening every Friday but there was a lack of inconsistency because on Friday, it was happening on Friday at 5. So, on Friday, people are leaving work, they’re in their cars. Exactly. So, by the time people would come in to participate, they’d missed some rounds. So, we’re like, let’s do it on Sunday at 3 p.m. when everyone is comfortable in their own space. It’s much easier. So, yeah. Initially, we were doing it weekly. At that time, the prices were not easy to get a hold of as well. Because, remember, you were cheap.
Exactly, yeah. And also, we had to create new, five different sets of questions, different from what people had played in the bars. Because if Mugi had played a quiz at Olive’s. If I see that Mugi has played it, I cannot play it on Sunday or on live games because I know you’ll have an advantage over everyone else. So, we also had that challenge. So, we actually first took a break where we were doing it once a month. Yeah. Then, it’s until later that we… Later, actually, this year, that’s when we were like, okay, we are back to every week. Yeah, but every Sunday at 3 p.m., and the prize is you win 20k for each round, and you can only win once.
We took away the overall winner thing because, again, at the moment, I had to pitch into my own pocket to push the whole thing. Yeah, so, at the moment, that’s how it’s been running. Sunday, 3 p.m., you have to be in the WhatsApp group to get the whole coordination gist and everything. And then, you also have to have your account. But the people who have managed to play two or three times now know how it works. I think the best part about it must be the banter. Yeah, the banter in the group. Exactly, yeah. Exactly, yeah. Then you have this team passing this team. Exactly, yeah. It’s real-time. It’s interesting because I like people dissing each other. Like, I can diss Mugi. I don’t even know Mugi. I’ve never met him. But I can just… If Mugi wins the book author’s round, I’m going to be on his case. I’m like, oh, Mugi, you’re a teacher or whatever, or What. Like, you get it? You know the drunkards. Yeah, we know the drunkards. Exactly. Exactly, yeah. So that’s mostly live games. You get it?
So back to five locations. At the time. At the time. Kisasi, Naguru, Muyenga, Bugolobi. But the technicalities were just too much. It was a lot to deal with. You get it? So we revised our model. We’re like, no, keep it corporate. A few locations. That’s it. You get it? So we streamed down back to three locations. You get it? We’re like, in those three locations, okay, we can manage four, but three. We moved away from this model because now, like on Thursday, we’d have like two or three locations. We reached a point on Thursday where we had Pizza Connection, Shisa Nyama, and Zara Gardens. And all of them we had to set up. They all needed projectors. They all needed… And we didn’t have to be there to coordinate that. So it was a lot of work. It was a lot to manage. It was a lot. So we had to scale back down. We realized the model of make it hard to get actually takes you further. You get it? So we’re like, with three locations, we’re going to keep it corporate. If you want it, if you are in Entebbe, you just come to Kampala, you’ll find it there. That’s where it is. You get it? So at least they know. If I can’t make it, actually that was the goal, yeah, look forward, Sunday 3 p.m., I can still win something. Exactly, yeah.
The “Engage” and “LIVE” elements of the Tambula Corporate Quiz:
Engage is like when you’re in the bar, you can look at the projector, see the questions there, and you just tap A, B, C, D. So that one doesn’t take data. But live means you’re loading in all the images, all the different options, like everything, the timer, you’re in sync with what’s happening on the main controlling platform. So that’s the one we use on Sunday, live games. That’s why we call it live games.
On How Tambula Makes Social Gatherings a Hit Whenever contacted to set up:
So that one as well, we, okay, of course, we share it with private parties as people meet us in the bar, they’re like, yo, how can I have this, like, in my office, or my birthday, things of that sort. And we’re able to offer that product. So we got people who had birthdays but would not just come and give you the same old questions. It’d be like, okay, it’s Mugi’s birthday, we ask the person organizing Mugi’s birthday, like, give us 15 questions about Mugi, maybe which month he was born, where he did his high school, exactly, favorite color, little details, but that are a bit funny. So we, those 15 questions, then you’re like, give us another 15 questions about the people who are going to participate. Now, those don’t even have to be questions.
You can just give us a picture of Mugi’s friend and his name. Then we’ll just put there, this picture, tell us this person’s third name, you get A, B, C, D, you get. They’re not so deep, like to get, because I realize quiz is about the fun. Exactly. Exactly, yeah. And people are drinking, you know. So we realized customizing it to Mugi made it even extra fun, you get? Like if I reached there and I’m Mugi’s friend and I see a picture of myself and they’re asking about my name, you get, yeah. There’s that personal attachment, yeah.
So we realized that was also a good thing. So we now offer that service, but it’s not just that. We started team-building now, where we’re going to corporate companies and we, again, get customized questions about company structure, company employees, KPIs, products, and partners, and we quiz people about that, you get. And then also, generally, you can also ask them general knowledge questions. So that’s team building within the company. And then that further, we took it further, we’re like, we can also do corporate fundraising.
So the fundraising bit is we added a feature in the system where, for example, fundraising, let’s say, Mugi’s getting married, we’re like, we need to collect money for Mugi. So we come into the system, we create questions about the couple. Like I said, customized questions about the couple, let’s say 15 questions. Then, before we start, we set an amount. We’re like, for each question you fail, you’ll be charged exactly 10,000 shillings. For each question you fail about the couple, you get. Or about Mugi, or whatever we’re fundraising for. So when it starts, the same way when you click and you see, oops, that you’ve failed, it will just add 5K on your account. So instead of seeing your points, now you’re seeing your money tally go up, you get.
So the more you fail, the more 10K you have to add. Exactly, the more money you have to add. If you pass, you remain on where you are. So that was the idea. So we did that for… That’s so innovative. Yeah. I never thought of it that way. Exactly. So we started doing that for people at their wedding launches. And it was a fun way. It took away the whole idea of people coming at wedding launches and they’re just… There are a lot of people who tend to be too, too busy and, you know… Even the audience itself. Like, you get some people who are very quiet, and some people are just going to be stiff. But with this, you sort of force money out of people, but in a fun way. And also, I feel like it also like, serves as an icebreaker. Exactly, yeah.
Because imagine we come, they’re like different friends of Mugi, they form their groups. So he has to put the 10k, but let’s say we fail seven questions, that would be 70k. So the MC would come to our group, among us, 12 of us, we discuss how we raised the 70k. You clear it, you’re like, okay, that’s done. You’re like, okay, bring on the second round. But the overall winner, at the end of let’s say five rounds, would give them like a big prize you get? So it allows people to work towards something. And it breaks the monotony. Exactly, yeah.
I feel like people take those things kind of too seriously. Yeah, too serious. And I feel like one of the future things of Tumbula should probably be taking this to court. Yeah, I know. Because in the court, there’s so much tension. I know, like they need pressure to calm down a bit, yeah. But yeah, so we managed to do that as well. We help people fundraise money for different causes, not just wedding launches. But of course, it applies more to wedding launches.
We help people collect money. There’s someone we helped collect almost 5 million shillings within a space of like an hour. Just people playing games and having a good time. Yeah, something of that sort. So it’s an ice breakup, but it’s also very engaging. So yeah, that’s one of the other avenues. So it’s team building, wedding parties, birthday parties, whatever you want. Any form of gathering, be it it’s your son’s birthday, we’ll do something for you. Whatever you feel like.
I really like the customary part because I’ve never thought of it like another family gathering because I feel like, you know, most young people avoid family gatherings because of the toxicity.
Yeah, exactly. But this offers also a scapegoat. Exactly. Just take away all that energy and create a different new energy, a more positive energy, a more fun energy, a more competitive energy. In some families, for example, people take long to see each other and they don’t have conversations.
But with this, you create conversations about either the person you’re celebrating or the issue at hand. And it sparks conversation because I mean, let’s say now since this thing is kind of like entertainment mostly, so it becomes like what’s the time of year you’re about to go for a lunch break. There, you know, people are actually going to have real conversations.
Exactly, yeah. Oh, my God. Can you imagine? Ono abade tamanyi birthday yange, and you’re like, I’m literally their elder brother, how can they not know my birthday?
Exactly, yeah. It allows people to know each other more. It opens new channels of communication. And it applies to companies as well. It’s what he’s experienced actually, that I could be working with Mugi for three years and I don’t know his birthday. I don’t know where he stays. I don’t know his second name. Like, I don’t know his interests. But that question could pop up in a quiz and I see, oh, this guy actually likes swimming. I also like swimming. That sparks, you get new connections.
And also still on that, because one other thing among corporate companies, at least I know, I know is “Secret Santa”. I think that’s the hardest part of everyone’s.. Yeah, yeah. You’ve been like, okay, now what can I do? What gift? Exactly. Because you don’t know the person.
Exactly. Because of this, you’ll easily be able to like, you know, Yeah, to navigate and know, okay, actually, we played the quiz where we figured out this guy is into shoes or he’s into Oh, you want to maybe surprise your boss. I feel like Tambula is doing like so many amazing things.
Yeah. I could talk to Philip all day, but of course, we have to keep it not so long Yeah. for you guys.
On how to reach out to Tambula Concepts and the future of Tambula:
So in case someone is wishing to have Tambula, because I mean, like you say, like you mentioned, you do fewer locations, Yeah. but it sounds like an exciting concept. Yeah. I mean, I’d want to have it at maybe, maybe they have an album-selling party. Exactly. So how does one get in contact with Tambula? So to make it easy, number one, the first way you can reach out to us is on the internet.
You can just go to Tambula. We’ve just been trying to improve our connections on social media. Right now, we are still trying to make it work. But if you’re on Twitter, you can just look for Corporate Quiz. If you’re, again, on Instagram, you can just look for Corporate Quiz, Tambula, Corporate Quiz. Those are the ways you can reach us on social media. Or Mugdi will also maybe share with you my phone number. But again, to keep it simple, just go and put in Tambula.UG. You’ll get all the information, at least summarized information about what we do, what we are trying to do, how we are trying to change society, our goals. I mean, we’re trying to now go into education.
We’re trying to, I don’t know, I feel like education is now our end goal. We also still want to achieve our main goal of being on TV where you can play from home, but you’re watching a TV show. You win big prizes. So we still have a long journey. We feel the bar is just like the tip of the iceberg.
And I do understand that from a personal point of view. Beyond the bars and you know, what would you say is the future of Tambula?
So, our future at the moment, to be honest, right now, when I look five years from now, my idea is to see, I want a teacher to come into class in the morning and teach kids about photosynthesis. And after teaching them, later in the evening, give them a quiz, 10 questions about what he taught them. I feel like that will bring in a more playful culture in class. And because I was a student once, you were a student I imagine as well. And when we were in class, we took things so serious. Sometimes guys would just sleep. But if I know there’s a game later to be played in the evening, I’ll concentrate and learn this photosynthesis thing more. Because like, with the reward system of the mind, you know, something is coming.
Whereas, right now, the reward thing comes in one month later when you’ve done the midterm exams and then they have to read your name among the participants. But imagine if it was happening every day. And these databanks could be stored. Photosynthesis can be done today, but the same quiz could be played next year and the year after that. And they keep refining the data. It could be shared among schools, and create school competitions.
So that whole culture, if we bring it into schools, and then kids learn how to do it, how to interact more with each other, how to work together, how to trust each other, how to forgive each other. Because those are some of the elements we’ve been trying to push. Like in your group, like what you said earlier, you could give me the wrong answer now, but you could have the right answer in the next question.
And I could look at you in the next one and I was like, oh my God, I should have, again. So it creates that back and forth. I think also an element of teamwork is couraged. Exactly. And I think that’s why maybe most companies struggle to make people just because they’re working with each other, but maybe they don’t like the idea of having to work with each other. They have to bear it.
And I feel like now with this, it also like, eases, builds kids to grow up knowing how to work with each other. Also how to compete. Competition is also a good thing. You need that to grow. Like at some point, because if you don’t have competition, you’re just going to remain where you are. So if you create a culture of competition, teamwork, and togetherness. Plus, I feel like, plus accountability. Exactly, yeah. Because you see, we shall know it is you.
We’ll see you. Exactly, yeah. There’s no way. Because most times adults, I think the biggest problem is accepting, well, fall short. Yeah, that’s true. Yeah.
But now with this, if it’s a thing we have brought among the children, it’s like 13, 13-year-olds, 14-year-olds, they’re going to grow up knowing, know whatever you do. Yeah, there’s a consequence.
Exactly, yeah. Like how it is now in the bar, where we know who has cost us shots. Yeah, like, Mugi told us it’s the master movies and now it’s let us fail.
Like, Mugi has to now look at them and be like, guys, I’m sorry, I let you down, but next round, maybe next time, something of that sort. So there are very many emotions that are evoked. Also working under pressure, that’s one of the biggest things we feel, we believe, but we have to force people to think fast. Mugi could be with his team there, there are five guys, but they have to make a decision within 15 seconds. The best decision. So yes, what you said is right, best decision-making. In life, that is a very key element. We need that. And not just decision-making, but fast decision-making.
You get trusting your instincts is another thing. So many times, I’m sure you’ve been there and you’ve seen, your instincts have told you it’s A, but you’re like, no, I think it could be B, but then you realize later it was A, it was actually, oh, it was C, oh, the above. Exactly, yeah.
Exactly, yeah. Exactly. So, back to our future, right now, we feel if we can embed this in the education system, we believe it will create a playful culture in school number one, where kids, even if on weekends, they’re excited to go into these quiz competitions, play together, or learn.
We believe, that with that playful culture, you will find that kids will actually be eager to learn, they’ll be eager to compete with each other, like the whole dynamic of education will be different, you get it. So, that’s why we want to move the focus away from bars and focus it on where we believe the tool would perform better, and be very effective, which we believe is in schools. Of course, we know we’re in first resistance here and there, but we are very determined, we believe, we’ve tested it, we’ve seen how human beings react to it in bars, how about in schools? So, yeah, right now, our goal is to push it in schools, but also Tambula itself, personally, I’m a tech guy, like, I’m a software developer, and I don’t just rest that, it’s just one product that I managed to do.
Of course, it has swollen up to take up a lot of, exactly, to have so many avenues here, and I mean, on weekends, this one is calling you, team building, on birthdays, Sunday, you have to do this, you have to do that, you have to do that, you have to do that, So, a lot is going on right now, Tambula, in itself, if you hear the word concepts, there are so many products that we want to roll out, either in payment gateways, or in transport, or in advertising, again, back to also supporting small businesses, there are very many things that we are trying to do all in that one channel of technology you get by using technology to form connections that is our main goal to bring people together in a more playful culture something of that sort so yeah it’s a bit of a mix of everything but right now our short-term goal is to venture into education make that a success any other products I’ll be letting you know maybe in the next talk but for now yeah our main goal is that.
Guys, that’s been Phillip Kalinda, he works with Tambula Concepts, the guys who bring us amazing quizzes.
Phillip’s Parting Shot:
Thank you very much for this opportunity. I don’t think I’ve ever done this. I just imagined let me just speak to you and just tell you what I think, but thank you for the opportunity. I believe this has just told me that I need to put myself more out there. I’ve thought of going to radio shows and everything but I’m always in my comfort zone being taken up by you know. So many people told me “You should go to TV and you know get interviewed about what you’re doing” but again I’m more in my comfort zone. It’s not until someone reaches out like how you reached out, and they are like yo you know we need to talk about this, something of that sort, but, yeah it was a pleasure. You may not know me, again my name is Philip, I’m a tech lover, I love computers, I love creating things, I love getting my hands, I don’t know into complex problems I love creating things that have not been created before. I believe it’s very easy to go out there and I don’t know get tomatoes from the village, bring them to the market, make a profit of them but I believe we could do more than that as human beings being blessed with a very creative mind and we ought to use that to create. We shouldn’t always you know try to do what everyone has done for the sake of making money. We have skills within us that we need to capitalize on.
Again I advise anyone out there if you have a passion and you have a dream don’t give up on it; keep pushing just go on and create it start with the little you have you just never know where it could end up. I mean I honestly never saw myself doing what I’m doing right now. I never I never saw myself doing that at this stage but it just started out as you know what like I’ve had this idea for a long time let me go and do it, and it’s through doing what I love that somehow the profit follows. Like you just now see where you’re going, you have the best build of that, so, I would advise anyone out there like if you have a passion, wake up tomorrow and start. Don’t wait for I don’t know everything to align. Just start with what you have, take one step at a time every day keep growing keep building. Don’t settle for where you are keep challenging yourself.
Right now I don’t have any competition in the industry but I still have that growth mindset. I still want to add more, add more. I feel like I want Mugi to come and have a different experience. Like invoking new feelings constantly. Because that is our nature as human beings. You are supposed to keep growing, otherwise, you’ll be like water that just stays in one place and stagnates but if you’re flowing and moving and trying to grow I believe the sky’s the limit.
Personally, I’m not yet at my limit but yeah I believe there’s a lot to be done. The team is still growing. We still have loads and loads of ideas that want to put there again. Also if you’re passionate about anything do it quiz or logic and maybe you want to work with Tambula, you can still reach out to me you can check out our website, get my contact, reach out to me, see, maybe how we can partner together we mentioned supporting small businesses as well if you have your business and you want to put it out there we offer a free platform, mind you it’s free we don’t charge people for sponsoring just have to have something to give out to the crowds we’ll put up your adverts for free everything yeah.
Also, we create some questions for you all that is done for free our goal right now is to support business because we know how expensive it is to advertise to get your product out there for people to know it but you never know you could meet your next customers at our next quiz event so yeah if you have your business your product and you want to put it out there; if you sell cakes you do what I don’t know anything of that sort. I don’t you sell clothes and you won’t present your product to the public we have hundreds and hundreds of people that we interface with every week so you could have an opportunity to work with us as well so yeah don’t hesitate to reach out there’s a lot we could do together and yeah when we work together as human beings we can achieve so much rather than working as individuals so yes if you feel like there’s something that I’ve said that has impacted you or that has invoked certain ideas in you don’t hesitate to reach out, I’m ready to buy you the coffee just exchange ideas yes.
In case you have read all the way to this point, thank you for being awesome. It’s been a very special “Cup of Coffee Conversation” shared with Phillip Kalinda. We do look forward to the next one. Do remember to share with a friend who you think might pick a thing or two from this.
