Sokoni Team

Sokoni is an AI sales assistant for Kenyan small businesses. In Kenya, shops sell through chat: owners answer the same price and stock questions all day, miss orders after hours, and coordinate payment and delivery by hand. Customers write the way they talk, mixing English, Swahili and Sheng, which rigid menu bots can’t handle. With Sokoni, a customer can ask “mko na crisps za ndizi za pilipili? bei gani” (“do you have chilli plantain crisps? how much?”). The assistant finds the right product and quotes the real price, builds the cart, collects a delivery location, and triggers an M-Pesa payment request. When payment is confirmed, the owner gets the order with a map pin. Complaints and refunds are handed to the owner, and the assistant stays silent on that chat until the owner hands it back. The owner dashboard shows today’s sales, orders to dispatch, every conversation with take-over and hand-back controls, and a catalogue the assistant uses immediately. Built for my own snack business, The Village Jiko, and for the many Nairobi SMEs like it. Status at submission: the demo runs through Sokoni’s built-in test interface and owner dashboard. The WhatsApp Cloud API webhook is implemented, but the Meta test number was still being activated, so it hasn’t been tested live yet. M-Pesa payment is simulated and the Daraja STK push and callback code is implemented.