Starting a new business in an emerging market has always been a daunting task with endless challenges greeting the entrepreneur at every turn. Having a great idea is one thing, but arranging for the proper licenses and the necessary capital funding can be formidable obstacles. Location issues are extremely important since waterways and roads may not support your needs for transporting your goods to market or receiving raw materials in the first place. Electricity is another consideration, as well, but ...

In the Philippines, hailing a taxi is an annoyance that’s not limited to Metro Manila. A bit down south in the Visayan region, residents of Cebu will regularly struggle to grab the attention of busy taxi drivers. Cebu-based startup Micab is trying to solve this problem. Launched in September 2013, like other taxi-booking apps in Asia, it aims is to help the commuting public get easy access to a taxi ride. While Malaysia’s Grab Taxi and Rocket Internet’s Easy Taxi have ...

Incubator slash dev lab, PlayLogix, recently announced its Startup Build Pack. This programme is said to provide entrepreneurs with real tangible support focused on product creation -- not just PR and business advice. There are so many incubators popping up across Africa but early stage tech startups still has a very high failure rate. In South Africa this has become increasingly popular. PlayLogix aims to set itself apart from other dev labs and incubators by focusing on product development with ...

The bigger the problem, the greater the opportunity. With the increasing popularity of smartphone usage paired with greater internet penetration in Africa, mobile security startups have gradually started to join the cause against cyber threats -- something that the continent is very vulnerable to. One of the most inspirational and well-known entrepreneurial stories in South Africa (and beyond) is probably that of Mark Shuttleworth. Thawte, as you most likely know, is Shuttleworth’s first digital certificate and internet security startup. The ...

So you’ve sent the perfect email pitch, and have set up an interview with a tech journalist who is interested in your startup. Now comes the next challenge: telling a compelling story. While writing skills matter in a good article, a lot falls on the interviewee. Reporters, after all, write based on facts, and if there’s little to go on, there’s nothing we can do to spruce it up. So knowing what the media finds compelling helps. Here are some tips to ...

Anyone with an entrepreneurial passion can start a business because startup and marketing costs have plummeted. All this is because of the internet. The internet has shrunk the world of commerce, making it possible to buy or sell goods from anywhere in the world. All one needs to create an ecommerce business is a computer and the fastest internet connection they can get their hands on. Marketing an online business While, of course, there are many aspects to running a startup -- ...

South African mobile startup GoMetro has been selected as a Global Finalist in the VentureOut Challenge -- an initiative of infoDev, a global partnership programme within The World Bank Group. GoMetro's transit app, which provides contextual public transport information directly to commuters' mobile phones will compete against 12 other mobile apps from around the world, in front of a live audience and a panel of experts, in Chisinau, Moldova on 1 November. The VentureOut initiative was launched to help mobile entrepreneurs ...

We’ve seen our share of ex-Rocket Internet employees rocking the startup scene regions such as in Asia lately. They helped build companies like Zalora, Lazada, FoodPanda, and OfficeFab from the ground up. But they parted ways and went on to build their own startups. And boy, do they have a good success rate in attracting investors and making waves in the industry. We talked to five Rocket Internet “graduates” based in Indonesia to find out more about this phenomenon. We found ...

Selling your house in the 21st Century has come a long way. Days where your only options were to go with an agency or fly solo are long gone, and yet entrepreneurs are still finding room for innovation. Property Switch, is the latest in a new breed of startups locked on disrupting markets with the help of technological innovation. The startup, headquartered in Waterfall, Durban, is a virtual real estate agency -- for the most part. Property Switch's managing director, Graeme ...

In developing countries such as South Africa, public transport, despite being used by large portions of the population, often has a disconnect between important information, such as routes, times, delays et al, and it being readily available to commuters. Add to this problem the reach that mobile phones have in developing countries, and startups have the ingredients to create value through smart technological systems. One such startup, WhereIsMyTransport, has combined these ingredients and created a social transport information portal called FindMyWay, ...