CAPE TOWN – Seedstars World, A startup competition for emerging markets and fast-growing startup scenes is in South Africa for the fourth time this year.
For the first-leg of the competition, Cape Town start-ups met up in Cape Town on the October 19th to pitch their ideas.
Seedstars selected 10 startups to present their companies in front of a local jury panel.
Three winners were chosen for Seedstars South Africa finals, taking place on November 14th at Seedspace Cape Town.
First place winner was a start named HouseME.
HouseMe is a platform that connects tenants to residential landlords, providing letting services for a fraction of agency fees, ‘the Airbnb for long-term lets’ was selected the best startup in Cape Town for its innovative sustainable solution.
The second place winner was Slide Financial, which offers white-label digital wallets and easy-to-use payment APIs used by businesses to create sharing-economy or investment app.
Last year, Business Report met up with Irshad Kathrada, a co-founder of Slide.
Developing their app was not easy explained Irshad.
"Creating an app is a challenge, I think because we're so used to fantastic apps such as Facebook and WhatsApp we forget what goes into creating one. We had numerous challenges and did all our development in-house as my partners are experienced developers", said Irshad.
In third place was Kuba, which partners with small business owners to bring them digital tools that help them access new markets as well as streamline their operation.
Seedstars World’s next stop is Johannesburg at Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct, to select the best startup in Johannesburg.
Besides representing South Africa at the Seedstars Regional Summit, the winner of the South Africa finals will win an all-inclusive trip to Switzerland, to compete at the Seedstars Summit for the title of Seedstars Global Winner and up to $1 million (R14 mn) in equity investments and other prizes.