Eight startups that promise to Ignite

Tech4Africa, a prominent web and emerging technology conference, has announced the eight finalists for its “Samsung Ignite” startup initiative.

The startups provide a diverse range of services, covering everything from real-time wine buying assistance to automised billing.

Ignite aims to showcase and foster local technology development and is inspired by similar competitions at internationally renowned conferences like South by South West and TechCrunch Disrupt.

The eight finalists will have the opportunity to pitch their companies to an audience of influencers, journos, bloggers, media, attendees, investors, mentors, and their peers.

“We are extremely excited about such a platform from which local technology innovators can showcase their ideas to a broad audience, potential investors and technology entrepreneurs who have walked this path before,” says Gareth Knight, Tech4Africa Founder and Managing Director.

“Tech4Africa’s primary aim is to promote and inspire local mobile and web innovators, entrepreneurs and developers by inviting global leaders in the sector to share their knowledge and insight with an audience from across the continent,” he added.

The eight selected startups include:

10Layer: The most feature-complete, competent and customisable open source content management system for serious publishers and media houses.

FeedbackRocket.com: Which offers an innovative online solution to obtain useful, insightful and honest feedback.

iSign.pro: That allows users to get legally-binding contracts signed in minutes – legally, cheaper, greener and stored forever, with automatic reminders before renewal/expiry.

Lessfuss: Is an affordable South African personal assistant service that helps you save time and get things done for as little as R30/task.

Mobiflock: Is a product range that consists of a parental control service, a personal smart phone tracker, and a corporate smart phone manager.

Plot my Ride: Is a social networking service for the cycling community that offers an easy and real-time means of capturing, displaying, saving and sharing a cyclist’s riding activity.

Real Time Wine: Captures the supermarket wine-buying audience and empowers them to discover, review, engage with and buy wine using smart phone apps, game mechanics & barcode scanning.

SnapBill: Is an automated billing system that allows users to easily sell their services online.

During the conference, each participating startup will be afforded five minutes to showcase its product.

A panel of judges will adjudicate the contestants and the winner will be announced on the second day.

The winning startup will be given the opportunity to present its product to the entire Tech4Africa audience and profiling on the Tech4Africa website.

In addition to this exposure, it will receive mobile devices from event sponsor Samsung.

Breet Loubser, B2C Apps Development Lead at Samsung says that the technology giant intends using the partnership with Tech4Africa “to help create a wider network of local developers, reward African innovation in the mobile tech and app space and promote the Samsung Apps Store as an alternative channel for smartphone developers”.