Deloitte Challenge winners announced

Deloitte's Cindy Benjamin with Lumkani entrepreneur, David Gluckman

The Deloitte Social Change Challenge awards the best social enterprise designed to create a positive, sustainable impact on any vulnerable community in Stellenbosch. The two Deloitte Challenge winners are already on the path to attaining global markets.

The winning idea, which netted entrepreneur and former UCT economics major David Gluckman R30,000 in seed capital, has already had social agencies from Latin America to India keen to buy his early-warning fire-detection device. The early-warning device warns residents and neighbours in the event of a shack fire - a problem clearly common to many underdeveloped countries. "There's massive interest globally and from local informal communities. I've been working on this full time with a six-man team for nine months, and we're ready for final launch."

Winner of the R20,000 award was Specular, an app for visually impaired people. The idea originated from a class project at US' Stanford University when Stellenbosch University (SU) BCom student Stephanie Cowper was in residence there. Market research at a 1500-strong conference of blind people identified need for the app. "It will start life as a global product and be live by January. A user can take a photo of a commodity and send the picture with a query about it and get an answer within 18 seconds. Because it is a paid service, it is sustainable," said Cowper.

The most entertaining pitch

Other winners include Riviernuus, Stellies Flats and WorkR, each winning R10,000 in seed capital. Superhero Status won the Golden Pitch award for delivering the most entertaining pitch on the final pitching night. Riviernuus is a free-of-charge community newspaper that provides good-news stories of vulnerable communities. Stellies Flats provides a comprehensive source of property rental information and estate agencies for SU students, while WorkR acts as a hiring and networking portal for skilled and unskilled labour. Superhero Status is a tool for brands to manage their reputation on social media.

Now in its third year, the 2014 programme covered all four Western Cape universities - including Stellenbosch University; University of Cape Town, Cape Peninsula University of Technology - as well as the general public, and had 81 entries.

Guy Harris, chief entrepreneurship officer of the SA Institute for Entrepreneurship, said: "Overall, the participation was good. It was a challenge to pick winners as they were all of a very high calibre. My appreciation goes to Stellenbosch University for this initiative given the paucity of entrepreneurs in South Africa, where we continue to have an entrepreneurship deficit. Now we need to find ways to include the other 99% of students, and then the other 99.5% of the population that is not involved in entrepreneurship."

High-tech ideas

Cindy Benjamin, senior marketing manager at Deloitte confirmed the depth of talent among those pitching their business ideas. "This year's entrants had some largely high-tech ideas, many of them capable of reaching a global market. Deloitte is proud to be associated with this competition as the focus on entrepreneurship is in keeping with our own strategic objectives of strengthening innovation and growing the next generation of South Africa's economic leaders."

LaunchLab provides mentorship and various services to students which enable them to take an early-stage business idea to an actual plan and to refine the concept for launch. Philip Marais, Incubator Manager at LaunchLab, said that the prize money, when combined with this additional assistance and their generally low overheads as students, is often enough to kick-start a business venture "as a stepping stone to the next level".