🙊 Half of SA Got Locked Out of the Bank
Bodyguards? No problem: One of the latest products on the Apple Store is Protector, an app that lets you book armed agents — choose from US military vets to special forces, use sliders to add armed convoys or motorcades and all kinds of crazy options. No wonder the startup’s co-founder calls it, “Uber, but with guns”.
Back in SA, though, it’s another Fast-Five Friday: 5 things you should know in SA startup, in 5 minutes — let’s go!
Together with:
1. TO THEIR CREDIT
Giving 27M South Africans Economic Access
We feature awesome SA FinTech startups in The Open Letter all the time – some of them aiming to serve folks in SA’s informal economy.
But did you know nearly 27 million people (45% of the population) in SA are credit unserved or underserved? They have no credit score, so they can’t buy a house, a car, or even stuff like laptops and cameras on credit.
Eek! This means 45% of SA’s populace is locked out of the economy – and you wonder why it’s not always growing as fast as we’d like…
But, local startup Pokkit is fixing this by helping these credit-unserved folks build up their credit score with savings investments: The user buys a Redeemable Savings Voucher and pays between R100 and R4k per month for 12 or 24 months.
This info gets sent to all the major credit bureaus to improve their credit score, and at the end of the 12/24 months, users have a tidy little savings amount they can withdraw (after some hopefully lekker 7% growth in Allan Gray’s Money Market Fund).
2. CONNECTING THE DOTS
Find Hot, Open Tables in Your Area…
There’s nothing worse than owning a restaurant, bar, or cafe that stands empty after the breakfast coffee run, or between the lunchtime or dinner rush. You’re not making money, your waitstaff isn't making money, and with all those overheads, it’s costing you to keep the doors open...
SA is fast becoming a popular destination for digital nomads. Since many of these people do not have an office, they need a space to plug in, lock-in, and get to work.
After much success in the UK, Reef App is now available in SA. Reef App connects the globe’s laptop force with laptop-friendly restaurants, bars and cafes in their local area. Reef members can get a spot to work with varying amenities ranging from Wi-Fi and electricity (obvs) to coffee and brekkie to fuel the hustle (plus a few more bespoke venue-dependant perks).
Restaurants, on the other hand, have a great way to drive foot traffic to their tables during off-peak times. Mooi.
3. COME FLY WITH ME
Building Faster than the Speed of Sound
Not since the iconic Concorde (shelved in 2003 due to high operating costs) have regular air passengers traveled at supersonic speeds.
But with the recent push to commercialise space travel, could supersonic passenger travel be back on the cards?
Yeah, about that startup that went supersonic the other day: In this recent interview with Y-Combinator, founder Blake Scholl shares the story about Boom Supersonic’s future plans: The Overture will be a supersonic airliner to transport around 65 passengers at Mach 1.7, running on 100% sustainable fuel by 2029.
And apart from being at the cutting edge of technology and engineering, Blake shares some incredible insights from his founder journey including fixing the economic issues with Concorde, finding the right people (starting with a guy who played hockey with some dude who worked at SpaceX), and navigating qualitative claims about quantitative topics.
Can you imagine a 45-minute flight from Jozi to Cape Town?
4. FROM OUR OPEN COLLAB COMMUNITY
Get Rewarded in Gold…
Gold prices just keep on rising, with the precious metal hitting an all-time high – returning over 40% this year in Dollars and Rands. It’s also seeing an uptick in interest (even Elon wants to take a peek at the real Gold sitch at Fort Knox).
We’re living in funny old times when age-old assets like gold are being digitised at breakneck speed, yet traders in London are having to physically empty out the Bank of England’s gold vaults in order to fly bullion bars to COMEX repositories in America.
And it’s at this intersection that we think our friends over at Troygold could very well be on to something with the launch of their digital gold API (dubbed GoldSave) late last year.
The API allows third-party digital platforms to offer their customers retail gold directly within their existing apps. Powered by Troygold’s technology and RMB Bank gold custody, digital players can seamlessly integrate fractional gold savings and allow their users to turn their rewards and loyalty points offerings into cold, hard Krugerrands.
The Troygold team claims that speed in adding digital products is key and hence the gold API can be integrated seamlessly by a mid-level dev in under a week. A quick way to add an additional revenue stream, earning 2% on gold transactions and a share of the monthly AUM fees.
The DigiGold API is already powering some of SA’s large remittance platforms, digital voucher players, a telco super app, and more coming on stream…
Keen to build with Founders like Troygold’s Dane Viljoen? Join our community of SA Startup Founders & Builders, The Open Collab today.
5. NOW OR NEVER
All the Big Health Corporates & Investors in One Place
Hey, HealthTech founders, ever wish you could get into a room full of corporates and investors who’re super passionate about growing SA’s HealthTech sector?
Here’s your shot: The legends over at Octoco are bringing together local and international HealthTech experts and putting them into a room for you to meet and mingle.
The panellists alone give you an idea of the calibre of people who're gonna be there:
- Richard Gordon – South Africa Medical Research Council
- Aurélie Ette Askia – Senior Investment Manager: Sanofi
- Esté Burger – BioCode
- Dr Anton Du Preez van Staden – Fluorobiotech
- Thomas Kisimbi – Boston Consulting Group
- Fanie Hattingh – Mediclinic
The topic? Emerging trends in AI, digital health, and groundbreaking technologies shaping Africa’s healthcare future.
Plus: Alongside the panel, African and local startups get a chance to showcase cutting-edge products through exhibition booths, fostering collaboration and investment opportunities with industry leaders.
Scaling HealthTech Innovation in Africa
🌍 HealthTech Expo | Panel Discussion | Networking
📅 Date: 27th February 2025 | 🕒 Time: 18:30 - 21:00
📍 Location: Workshack, Stellenbosch | Moderator: OST | Octoco
Organised as part of: BRAIN Regional Bootcamp 4th edition (so very startup-friendly)
🎟️ Tickets: FREE but limited…
IN SHORT
Made to share…
🪡 Stitched back together. Local online payments solution WigWag is heading back to the Stitch stable after it spun out from Stitch in 2023, and returns as Stitch Express. Stitch Express will serve businesses that operate on e-commerce platforms to integrate online payments like card payments, Apple and Google Pay, Capitec Pay, BNPL and more coming soon. Lekker one folks.
🚀 Time is Now. Wanna rocket your startup onto the international stage? The Isle of Man is inviting SA startups to apply for its 3rd annual Innovation Challenge. Successful applicants get access to world-class mentors and potential investors within their ecosystem. The winners unlock everything you need to take this thing global — apply here.
🤖 Google’s Co-Scientist. Google just announced its AI co-scientist built on Gemini 2.0 to help scientists create novel hypotheses and research plans. The collaborative AI tool lets researchers specify their research goal using natural language, and the AI co-scientist will propose hypotheses, summarise relevant published literature and recommend approaches. Check out the link for an infographic explainer of the workflow — it’s pretty cool.
🔪 Slashing our cash? Four of South Africa’s major banks (Absa, Standard Bank, Nedbank, and FNB) shut down 238 ATMs between them over the December 2023 and June 2024 period, bringing the total number of ATM closures from June 2023—June 2024 to 400. Capitec on the other hand opened UP almost as many between February 2024 and August 2024 — a respectable 367 new ATMs. Well, looky here…
🛑 11th Hour Budget Delay. Shortly before SA’s Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana was set to deliver the country’s budget speech on Wednesday afternoon (where it was expected he would announce a 2% VAT increase), it got delayed to the 12th of March. Apparently, other members of the GNU had not heard about the increase in previous briefings for “fear of it being leaked”. Awkies.
🔥 Easy-Peasy FYE. Where all the founders at? Stressed to the nines because it’s financial year-end time. But it doesn’t have to be so stressful: We got some of the best CFOs in the business together to come show you how to take the stress out of your FYE — register for free here.
JOBS IN TECH
Room to grow…
🤖 AI Product Manager @ Fuse Universal
🌐 Head of Network Engineering (Path to Chief Network Engineer) @ fibertime
🖊️ Mid-Senior Digital Designer @ Ogilvy One
🍲 eCommerce Manager @ Le Creuset
Hiring? Get in touch, and we will feature it here.
GAME TIME
Think you know your SA startups?
Lines of logic, dreams in flow,
Building futures, byte by byte.
From dev to startup, watch them grow,
Matching talent, left and right.
A bridge between the minds that build,
And those who dream of tech fulfilled.
WHAT YOU SAID
That one-day feeling…
On Tuesday, we asked about your ultimate retirement plan, and being financially free to travel’s the one to beat…
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏝️ Move to Mauritius (6%)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🛶 Go off-grid and live off the land (18%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 💰 Be financially free and travel the world (37%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🐟 Spend my days fishing & golfing (5%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏡 Stay put and finally enjoy my home (10%)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 😬 Wait, people actually retire? (24%)
Your 2 cents…
Here’s to Pieter, one day living it up like royalty 👑.
Ha ha, ja GL, some people can’t help it — retire them to a desert island and they’ll open a glass-making factory or something 💎.
Hey African Box, at the normal returns of 7-10% per year, yeh you’d have to invest like R5k+ per month. But last year’s best-performing ETFs were insane: Sygnia Itrix MSCI USA did 20%, 1nvest SWIX 40 did 27.8%, NewGold ETF and Satrix MSCI China both did like 40% returns. At rates like those, you’d only have to invest R500 per month from age 35 to 65 to accumulate R7 million. So never say never 🏆.
Sounds like a gift, Isaac! Here’s hoping you can at least do some of that in the meantime too 🎁.
Ooh, Charmaine, stop it — now we wanna come visit ⛳.
Smart, Benjamin, we taking notes… 💡