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PwC Vision to Reality Awards dubs WiGroup SA’s top startup of 2014
Corporate, meet entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship, meet corporate.
In a grand effort to celebrate small innovative companies in South Africa, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) recently announced the winners of its Vision to Reality accelerators programme. In-store mobile transacting startup WiGroup came up top with transaction authentication service Entersekt given second place. In third, there was a tie between Cape Town animation studio Triggerfish and elearning startup IT School Innovation (ITSI).
A first of its kind in South Africa, the top ten finalists were given the opportunity to showcase their innovative companies in order to gain access to leading advisors and a direct route to seed and venture capital. After two months of mentorship and refinement, WiGroup has been crowned the winner as it’s best demonstrated commercialisation of a unique tech solution.
WiGroup is described as a platform provider specialising in point-of-sale integrated mobile transacting. The company’s mobile transacting platform, simply called WiPlatform, is said to be integrated to over 50 000 retail till lanes across South African and has processed over R2.5-billion in transaction value. Take a look at its explanatory video:
First runner-up Entersekt, is a transaction authentication service for banks. The Stellenbosch-based startup’s technology is used by local bank Nedbank as well as Switzerland-based Swisscard mobile app, among others.
Those in tied third, Triggerfish is responsible for popular internationally acclaimed animation movies Khumba and Adventures in Zambezia while (ITSI) is on a mission to make education across South Africa interactive with its app. PwC Partner in Charge of the Western Cape, Danie Fölscher says the following:
“The Vision to Reality Awards programme, presented for the first time by PwC in South Africa, is set to become a flagship initiative for our firm. Designed to celebrate innovation and leading-edge technologies, the programme aims to recognise and honour organisations whose outstanding achievements have made them some of South Africa’s most successful technology companies.”
Fölscher further says that he and the group of esteemed judges are extremely proud of the amount of talent that’s coming out of South Africa.
