Vodacom App Star Challenge finds winner in Durban

Kishyr Ramdial (left)

The App Star Challenge forms part of Vodacom's strategy of entrenching itself within the local Android app space and key to this is its support of South African developed apps that cater to a uniquely local market.

Against this backdrop, award entries were judged on the local relevance of the app, user experience, design, content, and overall quality. As a South African directory of radio and other podcast content, the RadioPod app fit the bill perfectly, with the judges revealing that it scored highly against all five of these criteria.

"Groundbreaking local apps"

Ramdial, at 25, is an exceptional iOS developer thanks to his commitment to the craft for the last six years. With his big win, he walks away with R15 000 in prize money, an iPad2 and tickets to a local ICT conference of his choice.

Ramdial says, "For me, winning this award represents a stake in the ground for South Africa and Durban in particular. It proves that Durban-based developers can be relevant and competitive - not just with other better-resourced and -profiled cities in South Africa, but also globally. It is also the ultimate recognition of the excellent skills that developers within our team have honed during the last five years.

"One of the most important lessons we've learnt is that the best apps are the ones built by a multi-disciplinary team, consisting of designers, front- and back-end developers, strategists and the client. In light of this, we hope to continue developing technically and aesthetically groundbreaking local apps and in doing so, give even more credence to our philosophy that apps can be 'by Africans but for the world'."