Denis Opudo
The Demo Africa event is a launch hub for African trends and technology. The event is organized annually to help in the growth and development of African based startups. The 2018 Demo Africa event hosted a total 22 finalists. All of them took home development support from Amazon which is the global tech giant. One of the startups that made it to the 2018 finals is Airbuy. Furthermore, the launching of Airbuy took place at the Demo Africa event.
Airbuy took home development support of R180, 000 from Amazon. The startup has got a new payment portal. The portal allows e-commerce websites to accept payments without using credit or debit cards. Moreover, it uses digital tokens, Airbucks, which can be topped up using direct EFT transactions. The fact that Amazon which is a global company decided to give Airbuy a development platform was a great thing according to Airbuy co-founder, Kabelo Twala.
Apart from using the money to build their technology, the company will use it in running their daily activities. This will help them to settle some of their financial constraints that they were facing. The support received from Amazon will help Airbuy to learn about software development and cloud architecture. Furthermore, they will use it in improving their infrastructure.
Amazon has managed to either invest or buy companies in different sectors according to Inc. These sectors include publishing, artificial intelligence, financial services, and hardware. Furthermore, it works on helping in the development of many startups globally. Apart from financial support, Amazon provides startups with other required tools like mentorship and execution of ideas. It has an experienced team of workers that have worked with various startups from different regions. So they stand a good chance to know what is required and what should be done for a startup to be successful.
