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SA SME Fund in new mandate to invest over R1bn in black small firms, startups
SA's long awaited SA SME Fund will invest just over R1-billion or 75% of its R1.4-billion in funds in black-owned small and medium-sized enterprises, including tech startups -- the fund's CEO Ketso Gordhan has revealed. The fund, which is capitalised by 48 JSE-listed companies was announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa over two years ago when he was then deputy president -- but excluding about five backdated VC deals (most of which came about before the fund invested in a fund managed by VC fund Knife Capital last month), it has technically not yet begun lending to small businesses. Speaking to Ventureburn on Monday (19 November), the former PPC Cement head -- who took...
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Samip, Code for Africa call for Cape Town media innovators to pitch products [Updated]
The SA Media Innovation Programme (Samip) and Code for Africa are calling on media innovators in Cape Town to apply to attend the Perfect Pitch 2 competition which will be held during Code for Africa's Media Indaba Extra which takes place from next Tuesday to Thursday (27-29 November). Samip is a media initiative that seeks to accelerate digital media innovation among independent media outlets in SA. Perfect Pitch 2 -- which will take place next week Tuesday (27 November) at Code for Africa's offices in Cape Town -- will focus on revenue streams and business models. Perfect Pitch 2 follows another pitch competition Samip held earlier in the year in...
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Uber platform for mechanics Fixxr wins R500k from IBM in pitching competition
Mobile car repair platform Fixxr has won R500 000 from software multinational IBM following a pitching competition last week. The pitching competition took place last Wednesday (14 November) at the conclusion of a four-week bootcamp programme which was aimed at black-owned startups and run by IBM and the Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct. Johannesburg based Fixxr, which was founded by Curtis Young (pictured above) in April, beat six other participants to gain the top spot. The startup qualified for the support from IBM because Young's wife Nomathamsanqa (who works part-time in the startup providing mostly social media assistance), who is black, owns the majority stake in the business. At current Curtis Young is...
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Knife Capital announces participants in fourth cohort of Grindstone Accelerator
Cape Town based venture capital firm Knife Capital today announced the 12 companies that will make up the fourth cohort of its Grindstone Accelerator programme. They include an online shopping assistant, a smart security platform and an insurtech company. The year-long programme -- which kicked off on 29 October -- aims to help innovative SA companies to become investable, sustainable and exit-ready. Knife Capital partner Keet van Zyl explained that the announcement of the cohort had been delayed until this week because Knife Capital has been busy closing two deals (one which is still to be announced) and because Knife didn't "want the story to get lost in the GEW...
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Women entrepreneurs honoured as 2018 Awief Awards announced
The Africa Women Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum (Awief) has announced the eight winners of its 2018 Awief Awards. They include a Kenyan innovator who harvests drinking water from air and a South African entrepreneur who runs a fibre optic cable manufacturing company. The awards, which took place in Cape Town on 9 November after the conclusion of the Awief conference, featured 40 finalists drawn from over 1200 applications from across the continent. Through the awards, Awief aims to promote excellence in entrepreneurship and innovation among women-owned businesses in all sectors and across the 54 African countries. Awief received over 1200 entries for...
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Ugandan fintech wins Best Catapulter Award at Catapult: Inclusion Africa
Ugandan micro-pension service and e-wallet platform Four One Financial Services has won the Best Catapulter Award from Catapult: Inclusion Africa, a bootcamp on financial inclusion organised by the Luxembourg House of Financial Technology (LHoFT) Foundation. In a statement today (20 November), the LHoFT Foundation said Four One Financial Services founder Livingstone Mukasa's final pitch -- which focused on pioneering innovations in social security for Uganda’s citizens -- had "captured the imagination" of the expert jury at a final pitch session and networking event held on 9 November when the programme concluded. Mukasa (pictured above) received €5000 prize money and entry into the 2019 African Microfinance Week. Four One Financial Services...
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Snapplify to represent SA at next year’s Global Startup Edtech Awards finals
Cape Town based edtech Snapplify is heading to the Global Startup Edtech Awards finals in London -- which take place in January next year. This, after coming out tops in the awards' SA semi-finals last Thursday (15 November). The semi-finals -- which took place at the Bandwidth Barn in Cape Town -- were hosted by edtech incubator Injini, The British High Commission and the Western Cape provincial government. The event also featured a semi-final track for startups from the continent. The winners were selected by a panel made up of the Consul general of the British Consulate in Cape Town Ben Boddy, CiTi head of innovation...
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Here are the 11 AfricArena 2018 partner innovation challenge winners
Eleven African startups will get the chance to work with big companies such as RCS and AirFrance KLM and French accelerators such as VivaTech and FSAT Labs. This, after the 11 were announced as winners of various partner innovation challenges during the last day of the tech conference AfricArena in Cape Town, last Friday (16 November). In addition, each of the winning startups -- along with all other startups that attended the conference -- will also receive $2000 worth of credits from Amazon Web Services (AWS). As part of winning the challenges the startups will get the chance to work with the event's sponsors, namely: RCS, Saint-Gobain, AirFrance KLM,...
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Gambian agri-business platform Money Farm wins Seedstars Banjul
Gambian agri-business platform Money Farm has been selected as the winner of last Saturday's (17 November) Seedstars Banjul pitch event. Money Farm, which was founded by CEO and founder Modou N'jie (pictured above) in July, provides Africans in the diaspora and other investors around the world with potential agri-investment opportunities in Africa. Kameko was placed second for its Ryde Africa Taxi mobility solution while Nesthet was placed third for its mobile clinic service. Money Farm will now represent Gambia at the Seedstars regional and global summits By winning Seedstars Banjul, Money Farm will go onto represent Gambia at the Seedstars Africa summit in Tanzania next month and the global summit in Lausanne, Switzerland...
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How French investors are helping grow Senegal’s tech startup ecosystem
Senegal's tech startup scene may still be small, but a rise in venture capital (VC) investments -- led by French investors -- suggest that things are beginning to warm up in the West African country. Rodolphe Rosier -- a Frenchman who co-founded a Dakar and French based solar home system startup OniriQ two years ago with Mohamed Sarr and Michael Hernandez -- is optimistic. He says over the last two years the country's VC scene has been growing "rapidly". Rosier attributes the growth to the recent arrival of French VCs like Partech, Orange Digital Ventures and funds engaged in seed finance, like impact investment fund Teranga Capital. Indeed, last year Senegalese startups raised...
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