Did you see Skyscraper Live on Netflix {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Last Saturday, free soloist climber Alex Honnold scaled the Taipei 101 building in Taiwan (the world’s tallest from 2004 to 2010) live, without any ropes or support. You can still watch the full hair-raising 1.5-hour climb on Netflix. 🧗

In Today’s Open Letter

SA’s R500–R600 billion per year healthcare spend is failing people with chronic diseases – but Google’s bet R1 million this SA startup can help change the game

SA’s non-communicable disease load has reached critical levels: Deaths from major chronic conditions like cardiovascular disease, diabetes and hypertension have increased by nearly 59% over the last 20 years.

What’s known as “lifestyle diseases” account for a staggering 82% of all primary healthcare consultations in the country, not to mention 65% of these patients suffer from more than one chronic disease. 😳

And managing them is often a lifelong journey of consistent monitoring and medication adjustments, requiring face-to-face check-ins with medical professionals. 

But SA’s battling to deliver care

Our traditional clinic model is failing many patients, though, with a significant number of high-risk ones simply not enrolled in formal disease management programmes.

Why? Well, for starters, only about 50% of SA clinics have attained the DOH’s Integrated Chronic Disease Management status (which we understand to mean that only half of our clinics can properly treat chronic diseases).

But, mainly, it’s service delivery: Patients face high travel costs, long wait times, poor service and unsanitary conditions.

So, how do we help SA patients prevent complications?

The local startup bringing chronic care to your doorstep

Teledoctor is a digital health startup that wants to help South Africans manage chronic diseases from the comfort of their homes, not just via telehealth video calls but with actual tech the user takes home with them.

They are the official South African distributor of the ECG247, a wearable sensor for continuous heart rhythm monitoring that transmits patient data in real-time to clinicians, so they can plan and design medical interventions without the patient having to come into the clinic once a month.

While it’s still early days (Teledoctor’s app release is imminent), they were selected for the 2025 Google for Startups Accelerator: South Africa program, with participants in the 3-month accelerator receiving R1 million in equity-free funding and up to $350’000 in Google Cloud credits.

With this backing, Teledoctor is hoping to scale its capabilities beyond mere telehealth to integrate various medical-grade home healthcare devices, such as Bluetooth-enabled blood pressure monitors, glucose meters and oximeters, managed directly via the Teledoctor app. 

Making frequent, high-quality chronic care accessible to every South African with a smartphone? Yes, we’re watching this space…

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🚘 Tuning SA’s Automotive Industry. Government is putting its automotive industry policies under review after losing top spot as Africa's largest vehicle manufacturer to Morocco this year. Love to see SA try to get back to winning ways.

🤖 Amazon’s Big AI Shift. Amazon is cutting another 16’000 jobs at sites around the world, with people in its AWS, retail, Prime Video and HR departments set to be laid off as the company expands the adoption of AI tools. Ah, so AI is in fact coming for our jobs.

🤠 Remember Yahoo? Well, apparently, the search engine is still going strong and has just added a new answer engine that’ll run inside Yahoo’s products. It’s called Yahoo Scout and uses Claude AI as well as its decades of unique data and user insights. Oh cool.

🪧 The Names They Are A Changin’. SA could be getting a whole host of new names for towns and cities after reports that Sport, Arts and Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie approved 21 geographical name changes across SA. East London is set to become KuGompo City, with Graaff-Reinet becoming Robert Sobukwe Town. Interesting.

📈 Pipeline Switched On. Growing SA software consultants IQ Business needed leads but didn’t have the in-house muscle to run effective campaigns. So Cloud on Demand funded and ran full social media campaigns, turning marketing spend into qualified leads and real sales.*

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Yesterday, we showed you Luma’s CAPS-aligned AI school assistant, asking about the biggest bottleneck in SA education. And most say it’s class sizes…

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💬 The language barrier (5%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🏟️ Classrooms are simply too crowded for kids to thrive (44%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧑‍💻 Many kids still don't have basic data or devices (11%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🆘 Lack of teacher support (23%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤔 Something else (tell us…) (18%)

Your 2 cents…

Interesting, Bruce. Didn’t know there were so many unemployed teachers, but hear you about making education more practical. 💪

Loud and clear, Tredirs. By the way, have you met Bruce? ☝

South Africa’s startups raised nearly $1 billion in 2025 — here are the top deals.

In 2025, SA startups pulled in a quarter of all funding raised across Africa:

💡 FinTech player Optasia led the pack with R6.38 billion, followed by Lula (R1.85 billion), SolarSaver (R1.11 billion) and Stitch (R1.02 billion).

💡 InsurTech (Naked, Aura) and CleanTech (Wetility) featured prominently — but so did emerging verticals like logistics (The Invigilator) and embedded finance (Enko, Paymenow).

💡 South Africa’s startup ecosystem is showing a strong tilt toward scalable infrastructure: platforms, pipes and payment rails.

While the continent’s Big Four still dominate, this snapshot of SA’s 2025 deal flow points to diversification — both in sector focus and ticket sizes.

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