23/12/2025
As the year draws to a close, it is a good time to reflect on the milestones we have covered while maintaining focus on the vision ahead.
Conceptually, MARKA was born last year, but the actual implementation and building began exactly on January 1st, 2025. We made significant progress immediately, working late into the night from day one. However, three months into the build, we hit a major challenge with the OCR aspect of the application.
After two months of researching better approaches, we found a solution and resumed active operations in May 2025. Two months later, we LAUNCHED in July. We did this despite some internal hesitation because we knew launching would give us the real-time feedback needed to fine-tune or pivot. And that, we have received tremendously.
Here is our appreciation for everyone who gave us the wings to fly, scale, and sustain our operations.
Our first appreciation goes to the Akwa Ibom State Government and His Excellency, Pastor Umo Eno, for supporting us with our most significant grant and seed money. Through the Honorable Commissioner for Youth Development, Dr.Ekerette Ekanem , we received major funding after emerging second in the Akwa Ibom Youth Skill Week. We also appreciate Mrs. Lucie Ekong through whom we learned about the program.
This funding allowed us to secure proper hosting services, pay for essential APIs, and support the research required to build our custom Semantic Grading Model. It has kept us going as we finalize our preparations for the next phase.
Our appreciation also goes to the friends and associates who supported us with early-stage funding and assistance, specifically the CEO of Ollic ict and the CEO of VinceTech Technologies for their financial and non-financial support in getting us to where we are today.
We also thank all our customers, especially those who believed in us enough to subscribe with their hard-earned money, some doing so repeatedly. You are our real heroes because you kept us believing even when we had doubts.
To our teammates and colleagues: thank you for the long nights, the meetings, the research, the experiments, and the client engagement. Thank you all. We hope to see MARKA at the top someday, with all of you right there with us.
Finally, to our Sovereign God: thank you, Jehovah, for the gift of MARKA and the hope it brings.
In the coming days, we will provide a detailed update on our progress with MARKA and the new features you will be seeing soon. Thank you all for believing.
