NYDA top official denies plan to bankroll app for local entrepreneur’s new company

Mystery surrounds whether the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) is involved in bankrolling the development of mobile apps for a local serial entrepreneur who recently acquired a local leg of a US company.

Pretune Technologies Hloni Theko (pictured above) told Ventureburn last week that the agency was set to make an announcement that it would provide grant funding to 100 developers to develop apps for Verykool Africa, after he acquired 51% of the firm in September last year (IT wens.

Theko claims the aim is to help support local app developers, with the idea of using the best apps as pre-built in apps on the handsets that Verykool Africa plans to retail through stores such as Shoprite and Ackermans.

When contacted by Ventureburn last week NYDA’s Juliet Tsoke claimed she had no knowledge of the deal, Theko or Verykool

Last week he directed Ventureburn to NYDA corporate strategy head Juliet Tsoke who he said he was in talks with to finalise a deal that the agency was just days away from announcing.

However when contacted by Ventureburn last week Tsoke claimed she had no knowledge of the deal, Theko or Verykool.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” she said in a call last week.

Ventureburn contacted Tsoke again earlier this week to verify whether this indeed was so and what she meant by this statement. When asked if this meant she did not know the company in question, she replied “yes”.

Contacted yesterday by Ventureburn, Theko however claimed Tsoke does indeed have knowledge of the deal, but had not wanted to divulge any details of it at this stage.  “I was asked at this point in time not to get into the project right now,” he said.

He said the NDYA is about to get new officials deployed to the agency and that this was why the deal had been put on hold.

Featured image: Pretune Technologies founder Hloni Theko (Image via Youtube)