LaunchLab announces Ideas Programme winners

Earlier this month, the Nedbank Stellenbosch University LaunchLab concluded its latest Ideas Programme with a pitching competition for the eleven aspiring entrepreneurs. On Thursday, it announced the winners across the following categories: Fintech & Big Data, Paid Media, Edutech, Agritech & Food, Cleantech and Exceptional.

The Ideas Programme, a bi-annual competition run on all four of the public university campuses in the Western Cape as well as at the technical vocational education training institution, False Bay College is open to all students and other aspiring entrepreneurs from the broader community in the Western Cape.

This semester’s Ideas Programme was enabled through support from Alchemy-A as well as partners, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Nedbank, Innovus and Stellenbosch University (SU). Participants were able to submit business ideas as solutions to challenges posed by industry partners.

The LaunchLab received a total of 115 business pitch entries. Eleven finalists pitched at the Pitching Platform final and, the judges chose five winners who each won a share of seed funding which is to be used to launch or grow their businesses.

The winners follow below:

Fintech & Big Data:
BriteCap (R10 000): tool for finding and paying lower-skilled employees

Edutech:

MyGrow (R10 000): online platform for delivering emotional intelligence learning.

Scryo (R10 000): technology enabling extremely lightweight on-screen audio and on-screen writing as a tutoring service for learners.

Paid Media:

NewsForce (R30 000): crowd-sourced news content with a bounty attached to items in demand.

Exceptional:

Sxuirrel (R20 000): on demand marketplace for storage needs.

“These winners are not only an exciting sample of what our local entrepreneurs are up to but also provide valuable products and services that our corporate partners can benefit from,” says LaunchLab CEO Phillip Marais. “We believe the LaunchLab can provide a valuable service to industry giving them access to innovative and disruptive business ideas as well as playing an important role of facilitating collaboration between big business and start-ups. Both big business and start-ups have strengths the other does not have that we can help them to leverage to their mutual benefit.”