As a startup journalist I am always looking for interesting startups to chat to. I want to write about them and tell you how they are going to save the world, or not. As part this year’s Net Prophet event, an annual gathering of 2 000+ geeks and one of the bigger tech conferences on the South African calendar, the Silicon Cape Initiative decided to do give some startups a little press time.
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It’s a pretty nifty idea: get a bunch of startups in a room with the media, let them pitch their ideas and hopefully get some exposure. Well done SC, this is awesome, I wish it was a regular thing that didn’t rely on an event or the presence of someone like TechCrunch Europe editor Mike Butcher.
Anyway back to the startups. There are many entrepreneurs in South Africa’s tech space and most of them are pretty exciting and doing shit-hot things. I am always excited to see someone building a company that solves a local problem but is also scalable. Startups that address market need, startups that are unapologetic about their ambition.
So let’s meet the dudes and one dudette that showed up at this media junket.
Represented by its marketing manager, Powertime had the only female presence in the room, startup wise. This company is pretty kick ass. Powertime describes itself as a “level 4 BEE merchant business focusing on the prepaid electricity segment”. Essentially Powertime is changing the prepaid electricity game as a mobile merchant in South Africa. It provides nearly 7-million South African prepaid electricity customers with smart channels to buy electricity tokens round the clock through smartphone apps and a mobi site.
According to the company, it “develops, delivers and operates innovative solutions that provide critical knowledge and ease of use to empower customers, and help them make informed decisions about the use of energy therefore contributing to the South African Energy Conservation Program.”
An 88mph alumnus, Homebug monitors your energy meter, showing how much money your energy costs constantly with a handy reminder feature to let you know when you need to top-up.
“Using our simple but thorough website to realise where they are wasting energy our customers save around 10% on their electricity bills. We also have geyser, irrigation and lighting controllers that you can program from the web,” says the team.
Homebug is playing in the hardware space which is very exciting to see African startups venture in. Their tool is quite cool for an electricity dependent society and is quite scalable to other regions.
Lagunya Internet Business Centres
Lagunya Internet Business Centres is bringing connectivity to those that don’t have it. It operates in the LAnga, GUgulethu and NYAnga regions in greater Cape Town — get it?
“The philosophy has been to build self-sustaining businesses in previously disadvantaged communities through partnerships. A revenue and bonus sharing model with the site owners and shop managers has now established a well know brand in the area,” says the company.
Currently the company busy trying to raise funding so it can hopefully expand to all of the Western Cape.
If you know about FoodPanda then you know exactly what this company does. For the lazy people like myself who practically live online, this is a great service and it’s free.
The company claims to take “the headache out of food ordering”. Here is how it works, first you are given all the restaurants within your area, then you can place an order that can either be picked up or delivered. The order is then printed at the restaurant and confirmed within seconds, making it a seamless experience.
OrderIn claims to be the “world’s only fully responsive design food ordering site”. What is pretty cool here is that it has funding, a rarity sometimes in these parts, though most of that money comes from the United States.
Who is bored with Moneysmart? Anyone? Nope? Thought as much. How can you when budgets and saving are always at the top our minds? According to the company, it’s one of the first and only independent personal finance management tools in South Africa. What is it? It is a tool that helps people to manage their finances better.
“Our platform aggregates all your financial accounts into a single place and visually display’s it in rich interactive way,” says the company.
The company broke even at the end of the financial year, so it gets to fight another day and probably make some serious change in the process.
Attempting to solve the unemployment problem, Secret Agent is an app that allows you to find work in your area, complete tasks and get paid… all on your phone.
“Our market research platform connects brands with consumers by providing a campaign builder and analytics suite to brands for store audits, opinions, mystery shopping, price checks and general customer interaction and feedback. Agents can start completing tasks instantly for the fraction of the price,” says the company.
That’s very exciting.
Something every commuter dies for: information. That’s what these guys do. It delivers real-time commuter information to 50 000 daily users.
“GoMetro solves the communication blackout of train delays by means of a mobile website and suite of mobile applications (Nokia, BlackBerry) that provides times, updates and announcements to Metrorail commuters in Cape Town and Gauteng,” says the company.
GoMetro is an AngelHub alumni, and are now ramen-profitable, with profitability in the next six months.
This I am very curious about. A social network for people with chronic illnesses, it aims to provide a platform that allows people with illnesses to discuss, share and provide support for one another.
“People give and receive support from others with similar medical conditions to theirs, all the while building a patient health record online. The tendency to coalesce into online, conditions specific support groups is apparent,” says the company.
So far the network says more than 100 conditions have support groups on the platform.
