Five SA startups will next Thursday (28 November) pitch for a share of R5-million in seed funding at the finals of the Social Tech Startup Challenge.
The challenge is an initiative of the The Diageo Empowerment Trust. Through it, the non-profit aims to assist tech-enabled startups to solve some of South Africa’s biggest social challenges by providing the connections, best practices and capital required to scale in market.
The startups that will pitch at the event, which will be held at the Diageo SA head office in Johannesburg, are: bursary and scholarship platform Foonda, home security startup Jonga, on-demand sales force and market research firm iSpani, SkillShift and youth-focused sport talent platfrom BallTalent.
The five will pitch in front of an invitation-only audience and a panel of judges that will include Diageo SA Empowerment Trust general manager Sinethemba Mafanya (pictured above) and Urbian managing partner Anton Moulder.
Mafanya explained in a statement earlier this month that the judging panel will at their discretion decide how much of the R5-million prize pool each of the startups will receive.
He added that the prize money will be awarded as seed funding and distributed in tranches as the businesses grow.
The five startups were selected from among 2256 applicants.
This article originally appeared on Ventureburn, here.
Interested in learning more about the Social Tech Startup Challenge, or if you are looking to reach more customers that fall into this African 80%, book a session with us to discuss how we can help you deliver products and services for this new normal:
urbian.co.za/experienceurbian or
email us at: futureafrica@urbian.co.za
