A competition to generate innovative business ideas among university students in South Africa elicited five winning ideas, all of which have the potential to succeed in the FinTech space.<\/p>\n
The LaunchLab, a network of university campus-based business incubators, in partnership with Nedbank, recently conducted entrepreneurial challenge across partner university campuses in the Western Cape to foster innovation in banking.<\/p>\n
More than 50 aspiring and practicing entrepreneurs and enthusiasts from the Fintech, Big Data, ICT and Financial Services industries attended the workshop.<\/p>\n
Ideas were then either pitched at participating campuses or submitted online. The LaunchLab said it received a large number of sign-ups and pitch submissions, which were narrowed down to nine finalists.<\/p>\n
The finalists then pitched their Fintech and Big Data innovation ideas during the final event held at the Nedbank Stellenbosch University LaunchLab in October 2016.<\/p>\n
The judging panel consisted of five members selected from the innovation and business development teams from Nedbank.<\/p>\n
The winners:<\/strong><\/p>\n 1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Desmond Mongwe from MoWallet<\/strong> – Enables banks with a white label digital marketing solution to deliver incentives to customers with lower income The winners will now participate in the LaunchLab Knowledge Acceleration and Countdown Programmes.<\/p>\n They will each won seed funding and incubation support from the LaunchLab which they will use for the next six months will to launch and grow their business ideas.<\/p>\n
\n2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Njabulo Makathini from Airbuy<\/strong> – A solution to purchase goods using airtime
\n3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Conor Foley from Inku<\/strong> – A peer-to-peer digital lending platform
\n4.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sebastian Daniels from StokVella<\/strong> – A digital stokvel management and accountability tool
\n5.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yolisa Ncanda from Fingertips<\/strong> – Online payments done via a student card.<\/p>\n