Innotribe names South African Start-up Challenge finalists
The Innotribe Start-up Challenge attendees selected the five finalists from the African leg of the Start-up Challenge to compete at Sibos Singapore in October. The showcase was held yesterday alongside Swift’s African Regional Conference.
This year’s conference theme ‘Seizing the Opportunity’ focused on Africa’s potential and looked at the role of financial technology innovation in the region, making it “the perfect place for our fifteen early-stage and growth-stage start-ups to deliver compelling pitches around their innovative products that could support the economic development of the continent”, said an Innotribe statement..
The three early-stage start-up finalists are:
Intelworld – a provider of mobile applications that run on top of existing mobile wallets to help banks and merchants increase mobile e-commerce
Notify – a secure messaging infrastructure to help companies communicate with customers via mobile instant messages instead of SMS
YueDiligence – developer of an actionable, light-touch due diligence tool for entrepreneurs, investors, and service providers to assess deal readiness
The two growth-stage start-up finalists are:
2Quins – developer of Green Model, an enterprise SaaS financial information tool that reduces the time and expense of meeting banks’ operational and regulatory reporting requirements
ZAQ Finance – a provider of debt reduction, savings, and low-cost credit products to help low-income Africans become more financially secure
Fabian Vandenreydt, head of markets management, Innotribe and the Swift Institute at Swift says: “London, Singapore, and New York are part of the top ten cities in FinTech for years now. We were delighted to bring the Innotribe Start-up Challenge for the first time to Cape Town this year, drawing attention to the innovation happening on the ground in Africa. It was an exciting step, and we now wish the finalists the best of luck for the Finale at Sibos later this year.”
Hugo Smit, head of sub-Saharan Africa at Swift said: “There is a genuine spirit of innovation in Africa and the semi-finalists who pitched in Cape Town really shows the appetite there is in this market for new business models and harnessing technology in new ways. I’m delighted that Swift and Innotribe are able to offer these young African companies this platform and wish them best of luck in Singapore at Sibos. We are already excited about the next African Showcase at ARC 2016.”
The Cape Town event was the second regional showcase to be held in 2015 and was sponsored by Level39 and Wells Fargo. Next steps of the Start-up Challenge programme will be the regional showcases in Singapore on 28 May, and New York on 18 June.
For more information about the Innotribe Start-up Challenge and how to register to the upcoming showcases, visit the website.
To access the full list of companies participating in the 2015 Start-up Challenge, click here.
