LaunchLab's Ideas Programme winners
The Nedbank Stellenbosch University LaunchLab concluded another successful Ideas Programme earlier this month, where eleven aspiring entrepreneurs pitched their business ideas to a panel of judges and a live audience.
The Ideas Programme, a bi-annual competition run on all four of the public university campuses in the Western Cape as well as at the technical vocational education training institution, False Bay College is open to all students and other aspiring entrepreneurs from the broader community in the Western Cape.
This semester’s Ideas Programme was enabled through support from Alchemy-A as well as partners, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Nedbank, Innovus and Stellenbosch University (SU). Participants were able to submit business ideas as solutions to challenges posed by industry partners within the following categories: Fintech & Big Data, Paid Media, Edutech, Agritech & Food, Cleantech and Exceptional. The Ideas Programme is a platform for industry partners to access breakthrough innovation that the LaunchLab can then incubate on their behalf.
The LaunchLab received a total of 115 business pitch entries. Eleven finalists pitched at the Pitching Platform final and, the judges chose five winners who each won a share of seed funding which is to be used to launch or grow their businesses.
Category winners
These are the vertical category winners, with an indication of the seed funding allocation:
Fintech & Big Data:
BriteCap (R10,000): tool for finding and paying lower-skilled employees.
Edutech:
MyGrow (R10,000): online platform for delivering emotional intelligence learning.
Scryo (R10,000): technology enabling extremely lightweight on-screen audio and on-screen writing as a tutoring service for learners.
Paid Media:
NewsForce (R30,000): crowd-sourced news content with a bounty attached to items in demand.
Exceptional:
Sxuirrel (R20,000): on demand marketplace for storage needs.
