F5.5G Leap-forward Development of Broadband in Africa The Africa Broadband Forum 2024 (BBAF 2024) was successfully held in Cape Town, South Africa recently, under…
Meet the 11 startups aboard the Unreasonable Institute’s startup ship
Entrepreneur accelerator programme, Unreasonable Institute, is on a 100-day epic cruise around the world with 11 startups hoping to scale their businesses globally. The cruise is dubbed Unreasonable at Sea. According to the Institute its role is to “get world-changing ventures and entrepreneurs what they need to scale their impact”.
The ship left San Diego in early January and plans to dock in Barcelona in April, with a few pit stops in-between. One of those stops is in Cape Town. During the stop, a pitching session hosted by SAP, an enterprise application software company, will see 11 startups that were chosen out of 1 000 hopefuls from more than 100 countries, pitch to judging panel made up of the founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, Prince Fahad Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, serial entrepreneur, Kamran Elahian, Simon Carpenter, COO of SAP Africa and Marc Balkin of Hasso Plattner Ventures.
So let’s meet the final 11.
Aquaphytex is a biotech company hoping to combat the water crisis. The company claims to offer an eco-efficient and sustainable system for installation in companies, homes and outdoor areas. This is done by a combination of plants and bacteria.
According to Aquaphytex, its system allows the reuse of water for irrigation and other uses, as well as recovery for consumption.
It also regenerates lakes and other freshwater environments and recovers contaminated rivers and reservoirs.
Aquaphytex systems is currently installed in five countries servicing more than 300 000 people, and apparently has generated “over US$4 000 000 in revenue in the past 3 years”.
The startup is interested in making their technology open source.
Damascus Fortune is a nanotech company. The startup claims to be “an innovation driven eco-responsive company which produces low-cost carbon nanomaterials by converting greenhouse carbon gases emitted by industrial factories”. The company can for example, convert smoke from chimneys into reusable energy.
The company says it uses waste carbon emissions to create carbon nanomaterials using patented technology in existing industrial factories.
“Carbon nanomaterials — a resource in itself — has many applications as it is stronger and lighter than steel and can be a composite in many other materials to reinforce their structure,” says the company.
Innoz states that it is a leading mobile company in India and creator of SMSGYAN (55444.in) — a mobile search engine via text messages.
According to the company, “almost 87% of the global population has a mobile cellular subscription, making for a tremendously large market”.
Innoz claims to currently have 120-million active users across India, the Middle East and Africa submitting over five million inquiries onto its mobile SMS platform each day.
“Innoz is transforming the mobile device into a learning tool by giving users access to the internet and its information via SMS,” says the company.
This company is currently in Series B negotiations for US$30-million.
The startup aims to reform the education standards around the world. It believes the “only way to truly democratise education is to democratise access to quality teachers”.
The company has created something it calls “gamified teaching” — a teacher training and open certification platform.
“The solution is a simple and powerful pedagogy that is embedded within an engaging environment that enables easy and intuitive adoption by teachers, schools, and governments,” says the company.
The IOU Project’s feels it is taking “artisans’ jobs back from machines”. The company wants to promote responsible consumption and “to decommoditise fashion by radically shifting the dynamics of supply chains in apparel”.
The company was created because the founders wanted to “empower both the artisan and the consumer.” It uses transparency, traceability, and the social web to create a new more empowered supply chain that it calls the PROSPERITY CHAIN.
Through the creation of a brand and ecommerce platform to bring to life the new idea, the company feels the platform it has built will serve as a new industry standard as it intends to “white-label” it to all major apparel companies on earth.
Currently this company has made a deal with Nike to supply all apparel for the upcoming football World Cup.
Solar Ear wants to solve the problem of “availability and affordability of hearing aids”. According the company, “there are almost 600-million hearing impaired people in the world, with two thirds of those individuals living in developing countries”.
Solar Ear claims to have developed the first rechargeable hearing aid battery, which lasts for two to three years and can be used in 80% of hearing aids on the market today.
The batteries are solar-powered so they can be charged via the sun, household light, or a cell phone plug.
The company says it “also manufactures and sells the first digitally programmable and rechargeable hearing aids, which cost 10% of the market cost and meet WHO standards”.
The company’s products are made by the hearing impaired and currently sold to the hearing impaired in developing countries.
Protei says it provides a durable, wind-powered solution to waste problems at sea. The team says it “has created a shape-shifting sailing robot that is unprecedentedly robust, agile, and powerful and used to sense and clean the ocean”.
The company hopes the technology will be used to “clean up oil spills and plastic in the ocean, as well as collect invaluable data about our environment”.
In effort to leapfrog its growth the company has developed “Protei Open Hardware” — a plug and play sailing robot fleet, which can be Android-operated and remotely controlled via a simple web browser from a PC, laptop or mobile device
Innovating in the healthcare sector, the company is building a device that makes minimally invasive surgeries more accessible and affordable the developing world.
“Using bottom-up innovation techniques, Evolving Technologies created an endoscopy system for the needs of developing markets for less than 4% of the market price,” says the company.
Evotech is training doctors in the developing world for these surgeries through partnerships in the regions.
The company says that it has built a “portable endoscopy system for women’s health,” called the EvoCam. Evotech also makes the EvoLight, a light, portable, LED-based medical light-source powered via USB.
The company is looking for investment to scale to other developing regions.
Harnessing the power of the sun, the company hopes to bring clean energy to three billion people who lack access to clean fuels.
“Our SolSource S1 has been selected as the top performing parabolic solar cooker in the world by third party auditors and our SolSource S2 is the world’s first temperature adjustable solar cooker. Our products save lives, reduce carbon emissions, save time for women, and save money for families,” says One Earth Designs.
The company claims to be “feeding 250 000 people daily with ultra-affordable and fuel efficient stoves”.
The startups says it accommodates traditional cooking techniques, recipes, and fuel, and that its stoves cut fuel use in half and reduce the smoke emitted by 70%.
“After working full time on stoves for 8 years in 15 countries”, Prakti says it “has the key to be the first enterprise to unlock the global stove market”.
Artificial Vision for the Blind
Artificial Vision for the Blind says it has created a “system that helps restore lost vision in those who are blind”. The company says it has developed a pair of glasses that has a camera, a mini-computer, and a transmitter that together activate the visual cortex of the brain.
“Through this system, individuals will be able to read text, recognize low and high quality images, independently navigate, and develop spatial interaction, all in real time,” says the company.
