EY Africa Pitch Competition

EY Africa Pitch Competition showcases up and coming suppliers to corporate South Africa

JOHANNESBURG, 29 June 2021 – EY Africa recently hosted the Innovation Pitch Competition; an annual virtual event open to diverse entrepreneurial businesses offering innovative business technology solutions in South Africa; Zimbabwe; Botswana; Mauritius; Zambia; Tanzania; Namibia and Malawi.  

Ninety-two (92) entrepreneurs from eight countries were selected from video entries in which they had to pitch their business solutions to a panel of judges. The judges then shortlisted 35 finalists to compete in the live pitching event on 26 May 2021.

Finally, a Top 5 were selected for the final pitch day on 2 June 2021.  Each finalist was given one-on-one coaching to perfect their pitch to the panel consisting of a selection of EY judges, Larry Phelan, EY Chief Procurement Officer; Lance Tomlinson, EY Africa COO, Theresa Harrison, EY Director Environmental Social Governance Services; Lorenzo Bell, Assistant Director, EY Business Enablement, Environment Social Governance Services; Emile Michael, Assistant Director, EY Global Client Technology Sourcing, Assistant Director; Nqaba Mkwananzi, EY Zimbabwe Partner Business Consulting and Markets and guest judge, entrepreneur and speaker, Tebogo Mokwena.

In addition, EY Africa provide incubator training consisting “EY’s 7 Drivers of Growth” and “Business Model Innovation” modules which was open to all entrepreneurs in the African region who were interested in being part of the event of the half day event. EY Africa extends its congratulations to the Pitch Competition Winners:

1. deaftouch headed by Claybourne Appies
2. Farmhut Africa headed by Ryan Katayi
3. Summit Technology Group headed by Mo Malele
4. PASSWORDKID headed by Keletso Lekwake
5. AgriLife Limited headed by Costantine Edward

About the Winners

Deaftouch

deaftouch is a leader in communication access for those with disabilities. The company is comprised of a hand-picked group of industry telecom experts, disability specialists and elite management who use the latest technology and implemented best practices to create an advanced next generation communication solution. SOLVES is a Software-Based, Video, Voice & Text Call Distribution Platform, and it is the backbone of deaftouch’s technology. It was crafted by engineers who have decades of experience developing and implementing numerous call center solutions who approached the development of SOLVES from an accessible solutions point of view.  Its cloud hosted, web based, scalable, customizable, user friendly, and built on ITU standards so its reachable from most video endpoints in use today, including the endpoints the Deaf Community uses for VRS, as well as a click-to-call link on a webpage using WebRTC through a compatible browser. 

Farmhut

Farmhut is an environmental champion in the agricultural sector that brings originality and innovation to farmers by providing them with reliable, efficient market services. Only 12 distant physical markets service over 80% of the farming population with over 40% recorded post-harvest losses each year due to lack of information of where to sell, how to get there and how much to charge. Farmhut has a website used by farmers each and every day to market their produce. Moreover, it has the “uMudhumeni” WhatsApp chatbot that offers farmers free farming information on the go, tapping into the over 6 million daily WhatsApp users in Zimbabwe. Farmers pay Farmhut a monthly subscription to list their produce up for sell on its platforms. Corporates who supply agriculture related products advertise on the “uMudhumeni” WhatsApp Chatbot. A third of Zimbabwe’s population is actively involved in agriculture contributing 17% to the country’s GDP.  The World Bank predicts that this market will grow to $1 trillion by 2030.

Summit Technology

Summit Technology Group (STG) is a fresh, exciting, 4IR technology-oriented company that aims to bring affordable, accessible, and unconventional technological innovations to the mass market community of the world. The unconventional way the company packages its technology caters for businesses of all types and sizes – from backroom entrepreneurs trying to gain access to markets to multinational companies trying to access new markets. Their main area of focus is to help entrepreneurs and small businesses from townships and rural communities to ‘techify and digify’ their businesses, as well as to help multinational businesses looking to reach the township and rural market with the technological offering. 

PasswordKid

PasswordKid offers safe and reliable App service to parents and educators regarding the collection of children from school. The technology effectively unlocks children from their school using clever keys that inform the educators about who will be fetching the children. The goal is to provide peace of mind to all about the safety of children leaving school and to enable traceable interactions regarding the safety and wellbeing of children.

AgriLife

AgriLife is pioneering waste-to-nutrient insect technology using black soldier fly larvae to up-cycle organic waste into sustainable eco-friendly insect protein for animal feed. AgriLife produce eco-friendly animal feed using nature's most efficient agents, insects. The company is a pioneering a waste-to-nutrient insect technology using black soldier fly larvae to up-cycle organic waste into sustainable eco-friendly insect protein for poultry and aqua-feed industry. At AgriLife, they use traceable, recycled food including fruits, vegetables and grains to feed our insects. This environmentally responsible approach reduces the volume in landfills while delivering high quality nutrients for animal feed. 

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