Denis Opudo
Within a span of four years that is between 2013 and 2017, a total of 237 startups have taken part in the Seedstars annual summit. This is out of almost 13,000 applicants. Out of the 237 startups that took part in the summit 65 of them are African startups. Five of them are from SA namely GUST Pay in 2013, Lumkani in 2014, Giraffe in 2015, Kandua was formerly known as ID Work in 2016 and EM Guidance in 2017. We kept a close eye on these startups and looked at the movement after taking part in the competition.
Founded in 2012 by Joe Botha the startup developed RFID wristbands and smartphone apps. This was meant for cashless payment and access control for firms to use them at corporate events, sports stadiums and live music events. The founder’s LinkedIn profile shows that he was employed up to 2014 December. After 2014 the company was not mentioned by the media either on Twitter or Google. To mean the company ceased to operate from then. Botha together with Michael Pollock founded Octolel, a fibre network in 2015. His LinkedIn profile shows that he has been developing and operating startups in the telecom sector for a period of 16 years. He also plays a role in the running of TrustFabric.
Lumkani
Since taking part in the competition in 2014, founders of the startup have improved their early-warning device for fires in informal settlements. According to Lumkani’s co-founder David Gluckman, the device has been improved further. He supplies the current device in place of 5,000 shacks. This takes place in Imizamo Yethu the informal settlement in Cape Town. The improvements consist of heat profile data. This has minimized the chances of a false alarm on devices like heaters, stoves or kettles. On top of that, the use of accurate GPS tracking officials at the control center is in a position to isolate a reported incident to a single shack on its own. This is different from previous where the device was only in a position to mark out the approximate location where the incident took place at. According to reports from the company, Gluckman was on the verge of announcing a huge contract. But he declined to give the contract’s details since he was not allowed to do so by the client. Founded by Gluckman, Emily Vining, Samuel Ginsberg, Paul Mesarcik, Max Basler and Francois Petousis in 2014, Lumkani has so far supplied 18,000 devices mainly to shacks in four informal communities in SA.
Giraffe
South African startup Giraffe become the winner of 2016 Seedstars World Summit. This secured it an equity investment of an undisclosed capital and it also placed it on the radar of both international and local investors. Based in Johannesburg, Giraffe operates an online platform that links job seekers to job opportunities. The startup announced a second round of funding in April this year which was led by Edge Group.
According to Anish Shivdasani Giraffe’s CEO, the award placed the startup to the attention of the media and this led to it getting its first round of funding led by Omidyar. He adds that the competition offers the startups PR and visibility and that is why it is important to take part in it. But he admits that when the Seedstars approached them in 2015 they declined the offer. He, later on, convinced his co-founder Shafin Anwarsha that it was better for him to represent the company just to win the pitching competition for the company. For real he participated and won it. He, later on, won it again in Switzerland after a few months after the first win.
Presently Giraffe has employed 10 individuals which are twice the initial number. Shivdasani says that the company plans to have double the number in a span of one year. He adds that since 2015, Giraffe has attracted more than 500,000 job seekers and invited not less than 200,000 individuals for interview.
Kandua was formerly known as ID Work
Founded in 2014 by Arjun Khoosal and Sayo Folawiyo, Kandua gives a platform that links technically minded informal employees to customers. The company rebranded to Kandua in 2017. According to Khoosal, the company’s participation in the Seedstars competition made it trend on Twitter. People showed less attention in the company before it took part in the competition. He says that Kandua got funding from two institutions and a number of investors in 2017. He declined to disclose the worth of the funding or disclose the name of investors. Furthermore, he refused to talk about the sales growth digits or tell the number of traders who have registered as clients. The startup still has much of its focus on Gauteng and has secured an agreement with world leaders in the hardware store and DIY to partner and work together.
EM Guidance
EM Guidance founded by Mohammed Dalwai and Yaseen Khan in 2016, was among the 12 finalists at the 2018 Seedstar World Summit. The startup combines medical content from local experts for medical experts in a single app. It won the Merck health tech prize worth $50,000 at the 2018 Seedstars World Summit. The 2018 Seedstars Global Winner category went to AgroCenta from Ghana. According to Khan, the startups will get a number of benefits after clinching the award including support from the firm’s accelerator and innovation system. The summit has its headquarters in Darmstadt in Germany.
