The MEDO entrepreneur finalists.
A number of the South African Micro Enterprise Development Organisation (MEDO) tech startups have become partners with United Kingdom corporates as an outcome of their investor trip.
MEDO gave feedback on its UK investor trip last week at the University of Stellenbosch Business School (USB).
HumanIPO reported earlier this year on MEDO’s British Telecom (BT) International Trading Programme aimed at South African entrepreneurs.
Inferno Films is now the official South African partner of Jacaranda, a UK-based film production company which does work for Harrods and blue chip companies.
Dean Thompson, managing director of Inferno Films, said: “It was a dream that I thought would take a couple of years, but through the programme it took me six months from when I started operating to doing business there.”
Tech valorisation company InnoVartis has gained deals with two UK companies, through which they will roll out games and a unique wallet in South Africa.
The Johannesburg-based business will also benefit from training for the upskilling of their African team from abroad.
Yongama Skweyiya, co-founder of InnoVartis, said despite email correspondence which has been ongoing between the businesses, meeting the executives face to face was key in reaching the agreement.
He explained: “Sharing the idea of what the African market holds…made it all easy.”
HumanIPO reported earlier this year on InnoVartis’s gaming department, uBi Gaming’s launch on Mxit.
Business automation IT services company Phakamo Holdings has become Alfresco’s local partner.
Phakamo will play a role in the upgrading of open platform collaboration business Alfresco’s systems and enhance the enterprise’s global presence by adding South Africa to its business map.
African crafts e-commerce startup WavuNow has connected with players such as
Bloomberg and Brand Addition, who are willing to work with the company in expanding to other international markets such as the United States and Asia.
Veronica Shangali Aswani, co-founder of WavuNow, said: “As an African from Africa, you are sitting with so much worth in knowledge that when you interact with Europeans who want to come to the place where development was happening, they want expertise.”
“They need us,” she added.
Creditable Co., a startup who enables large corporates to become small lenders, has not attended the UK investor trip because of large Batswana interest which emerged shortly before the tour was scheduled.
The financial startup aims to expand across Africa in the near future.
