Ifeanyi Edward is the chief executive officer of Proxynet Communications. He has over a decade experience in the information technology industry especially in the technical and sale service sector of the industry. He joined Proxynet five years ago and has helped the company establish its footprint in several African countries such as Nigeria and South Africa. He spoke to chike onwuegbuchi on new product DieslFix which the company has just introduced into the market.

Dieselfix
Proxynet Communications is the authorized sole distributor of DieselFix, a product purely made to reduce the diesel consumption of the generators. DieselFix is owned by Supafuel based in Geneva, Switzerland while the DieselFix factory is in Johannesburg, South Africa. Our key focus is to save fuel, we want to save the engine, we want to save the environment. Today in Nigeria, every sector, the financial services sector, the telecom sector, manufacturing sector, hospitality sector, among others uses thousands of litres of diesel, everyday, every month to keep their businesses running because of the peculiarity of the Nigerian infrastructure from the power perspective.
Dieselfix is not a new product as it were to Nigeria; different companies are already using it. Tests have been done in Nigeria with some telcos and tests are being done presently with some companies in the hospitality industry. We are confident that when we put this product in any generator that runs on diesel or fuel as it were, we are 100 percent sure that it will give the owner a minimum of 10 percent savings on the cost of each litre of diesel such generator uses. The simple chemistry there is that diesel naturally absolves water and diesel naturally contains water, our solution reacts with the water in any diesel by converting it to fuel soluble lubricant.
Environmental Hazards of the Solution
That is why we say we are saving the environment. With the test conducted today in Israel, nearly six months test with the university, it will reduce the air emission by over 30 percent. For example, hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide will all come down by 30 percent and the suit that causes cancer will come down by 30 percent. We are running a similar test in China. A litre of Dieselfix is used in every 4,000 litres of diesel used in any generator to ensure a 10 percent reduction in diesel consumption while maintaining and ensuring that you have lesser maintenance cost of your engine because it burns off  the carbon dioxide.
Our starting point is quite different from others, in Nigeria’s case we have very little refining credibility, so the crude oil is exported out and the finished product is brought back to the country by sea and in that process after the fuel has been produced and brought back to Nigeria, the handling also is very poor in many cases accumulates a lot of water. What we have done is that we have tested some of the diesel here in the country to confirm that fuel have a lot of water in this country. Clean diesel should be clear, clean and conform to specification. We are saying if you have bad diesel and you put it into your engine, you can have bad results because water should not be in the diesel to start off with, because the minute there is water, it is off the specification of diesel. That water touches your engine in a few ways because it has no lubricity and will damage your fuel system; your fuel pump and fuel injectors will be damaged by the water. A lot of the companies that we spoke to said they change injectors all the time and injectors are very expensive parts of an engine. A modern engine in fact is not very tolerant of water because it is extremely high compression as it work under extreme pressure and water is a definite No. Also, when you have the water and the diesel together, water has no power; it does not combust, so, you mixing it into your fuel to generate power is bad. When water is in diesel you have to spend more money buying more diesel for the same amount of power. Any engineer will understand that water should not be in the engine, it is bad for the engine, and it will destroy the engine and will raise operating cost in terms of maintenance and spending more on diesel. It will also increase your capital expenditure because when your generator packs up, you have to buy a new one. For a telco for example, when a generator goes down because of water related problems, that BTS cannot generate traffic so you actually loose a lot of revenue. In a hotel, when your generator goes down, guests will not stay there because there is no light. We understand the Nigerian fuel on a day to day basis and our solution is designed to treat that. But however, we work throughout Africa, it is not unique to Nigeria but to a lesser degree in more developed countries because the control is better.
How much Telcos Can Save in A Year Using The Solution
We guarantee a minimum of 10 percent savings. This product is different in that, it is not an additive. It is a synthetic fuel, our product conforms to diesel specification and why is that important? It is very important because at the end of the day generators in Nigeria are made by somebody. For example, Caterpillar published a worldwide book on bad fuel, stating what they expect their customers to do. If you as a customer is putting a fuel like that into your engine, your warranty expires, if Caterpillar finds out that this is the kind of fuel you use. I can show you in reality that this is what is happening. A fuel specification from Caterpillar states that the kind of fuel you use must have no water, a minimum amount of this and that. What we have done as a company is to map out a fuel specification for Nigeria and the government also said for the fuel we use in Nigeria, it is going to conform to certain specifications. The certification of our product which confirm our products is 100 percent diesel means you can take our product if you want to, fill up your diesel engine and it runs, you cannot do that with any other product. This means the end user will have no warranty issue which is extremely important. Ours is a synthetic diesel, it is a chemical diesel, it is not biodiesel. Biodiesel is when you take plants and turn it into diesel. We are a chemical diesel because diesel is carbon and hydrogen. Our diesel is designed to do two things; one, it converts the water in the diesel into a fuel soluble lubricant; two, it is a very competent carbon solvent because as the engine works with a typical Nigerian fuel, there is a lot of carbon. When you look at any generator, when it is started, a thick fog of smoke pops up. That is the unburnt fuel that clogs up the engine, making it less efficient. At the same time the same solvent dissolves all the bacteria growing in the diesel. So, our product cleans the fuel and the engine to give maximum combustion for minimum emission, thereby reducing the cost of maintenance.
Support
In a short while, everything working out the way we plan, we will have a mini plant here because it is not produced locally, by then we will have everything necessary to support the product. In terms of support, we have a 14 to 17 man technical team in the country regularly to support the product and carry out skill transfer.
Target Market
The target market is all companies in Nigeria, because everybody runs their generator on diesel. It will make a lot of sense for even the middle scale industries, financial services sector, manufacturing companies, telecommunication companies and hospitality sector. I am sure you will recognize that manufacturing companies especially the textile industries packed up because of diesel, they could not afford to run on diesel for 24 hours.

Proskool Software
Proskool software is a complete web enabled database driven school management software that manages both students and staff records to simplify school management procedures. The software is designed to ensure better data flow between school management team, students, parents and teachers. It is geared towards the nursery, primary and secondary schools. Proskool seamlessly manages school administration, students’ billings, process student’s results and staff payroll.
With an Internet connection in place, the school management team enjoy the flexibility of logging into the software from anywhere in the world. They can have an overview of all students registered per term, have first hand detailed information on students’ school fees payment status, know the amount owed the school with an idea of due payment dates without consulting the accountant.
Proskool captures students and parents’ biodata to enable the school send messages to parents on occasions like birthdays or other events to foster harmonious relationship between the school and parents. Students’ report sheets can also be generated and e-mailed to parents and guardians to ensure proper receipts of report cards by parents.
Teachers can as well see the payment status of each student in their class to initiate a proper follow up and can automatically compute students’ cumulative point after each test and examination.
Proskool was developed using PHP server-side scripting, MySQL and Apache web server and is compliant with all web browser. Its uniqueness lies in its ability to simplify task and make records more useful.