Author: Ventureburn

 By Jacques Coetzee: staff reporter Ventureburn Things are looking bright for East Africa this season. At least that’s the case for the solar as a service startup Off Grid Electric and its customers. Tanzanian-based solar company Off Grid Electric has raised a massive US$16-million (about R184-million) lead by the US alternative energy giant and NASDAQ-listed, SolarCity, the UK’s Zouk Capital as well as Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital. The investment comes after it raised US$7-million (roughly R80-million) in March this year. Similar to the mobile airtime model, the startup introduces a pre-paid solar power system that asks the home-owner…

By Nur Bremmen: Staff reporter, Ventureburn Whiteboards, pinboards and chalkboards are old-school. At least this is what WriteBoard Technologies — a South African startup that hopes to change the ways in which businesses brainstorm, teachers teach and households stay on the same virtual page — thinks. The startup is hoping to raise funding via the crowdfunding site, Indiegogo, with an ultimate goal set at US$100 000. Pretty ambitious. The funds are needed “to finalise mass production strategies and align [WriteBoard Technologies] with partners who can assist in certain aspects of the manufacturing process,” reads the project page. In essence, the…

By Jacques Coetzee: staff reporter, Ventureburn South African crowdsource design startup Springleap has just announced that it has secured a seed round of US$400 000 (R4.1-million) from a mix of South African and British Angel Investors including Colenso Capital, Clearwater, Kevin Gaskell and Crystal Bay Capital. Chairman of Springleap advisory board Kevin Gaskell, who is also the former MD of Porsche and BMW, boasts that “the team at Springleap had gained significant traction in a short amount of time with Fortune 500 brands and have a big vision to empower the creative industry.” The investment will be used to help…

By Jacques Coetzee This is pretty awesome. Time and time again we have written about how business registration and red tape are some of the key obstacles to businesses development across the globe, especially in many parts of Africa. This might start to change, however. A new simplified online registration system, called the Global Enterprise Registration, has been introduced in an effort to boost business growth in Africa and other emerging markets. The initiative was launched at the World Investment Forum 2014 by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) this week. Registering a…

By Jacques Coetzee: Ventureburn staff reporter After pitching to a panel of renowned judges, South African property management startup PropCare has secured a R300 000 funding round from the investors on entrepreneurial reality show Dragons’ Den. PropCare is an app that provides a platform for property owners to find reliable, user-rated, locally-based property service providers. From garden maintenance to handymen, plumbers and electricians, people can easily find quotations and confirm bookings. “I’ve been a real estate agent for over 10 years and I started PropCare because I saw that my customers struggled to find reliable service providers in their areas.…

By Jacques Coetzee: staff reporter Ventureburn Bitcoin in Africa is brewing with potential. From Ghana to Kenya there are interesting startups trying to tackle the issue of remittances, while in South Africa popular payment gateway PayFast recently introduced bitcoin integration to more than 30 000 of its ecommerce clients. But although this is very exciting, the adoption rate of the cryptocurrency is still very slow due to an abundance of misconceptions and a lack of infrastructure. South African startup Xoin (pronounced with the Xhosa click) is hoping to drive bitcoin adoption in order to give the country’s underbanked and untapped markets…

By Jacques Coetzee South African tech company Millbug has recently announced its Vuya tablet PC together with its grand vision of bringing affordable gadgets to local areas with limited access to electricity. Vuya carries a price tag of just R1 500 and is developed with one of South Africa’s most widely available resources in mind: the sun. The tablet relies on a solar charger (which is bundled with the device) as well as traditional electricity power outlets. Apart from having a very nice ring to it, Vuya means “be happy” in isiXhosa. The company hopes that its tablet will increase…

This post was originally written by Jacques Coetzee: staff reporter for Ventureburn, our Africa pubishing partner and was reposted here wih permission. Read the story on Ventureburn here. *** A new online shop called Raru has joined South Africa’s ecommerce scene. Currently in beta, the site is the brainchild of three of the founders of the ecommerce site now known as Takealot, which specialises in consumer tech like video games, music and computers. Raru’s directors are Neil Smith, Waine Smith and Jose Pereira. The trio were all partners at Take 2 — an ecommerce shop founded in 2002, which later…

By Ventureburn’s Staff Reporter This post originally appeared on Ventureburn.com, our Africa publishing partner and has been reposted here with permission.  ****ePublishing startup Snapplify is set to provide South African learners access to (digital) educational content through a new, and free, eBook store. Snapplify states that it has been watching South Africa’s academic space for some time, all the while developing solutions “aimed specifically to help more schools access eBooks.” The thinking behind the move is that while many students in the country, and other emerging markets, don’t have access to physical textbooks, a lot of learners do have mobile…

 By Jacques Coetzee The South African taxi app startup, Zapacab, is closing shop. Since it launched in beta under the 88mph accelerator programme in July 2013, the guys from the cab-hailing app recall a bumpy road, but one they won’t regret. Zapacab’s service was rather simple and has been popularized by the likes of Hailo, Lyft and Uber the world over. By relying on your smartphone’s GPS, passengers simply tap a button in the app, enter their phone number, and wait and watch their ride come closer on a map in real-time. But if it’s that simple, why did it…

By Marguerite Heyns Big names in technology and investment scene in South Africa yesterday met up in downtown Cape Town with some of the most promising startup offerings in the city. Net Prophet’s Sparkup!Live is a self-professed business gauntlet connecting founders to secure investment and (for some) a very prosperous future. The event hosted pitches by the top seven startups to come out of Net Prophet’s coveted training program for startups this past weekend. The key Angel investors were made up of Cape Town’s technology royalty, including Justin Stanford, founder of Silicon Cape Initiative and 4Di Capital. Here are our…

By Marguerite Heyns WooThemes changed the ecommerce game today by releasing the first ever comprehensive online booking tool for users of its most popular plugin, WooCommerce. The extension will allow online business enthusiasts to trade their time for cash money, set up appointments, connect with clients, link dependent resources, and integrate their services with their website. WooCommerce is well established as the leading ecommerce solution for WordPress users. Over 12% of shopping conducted online today is done through the WooCommerce plugin, accounting for a whopping 260 000 websites worldwide. Since the launch of WooCommerce in 2011, WooThemes has pioneered ecommerce…

By Jacques Coetzee The use of UAVs (or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) has ruled the headlines over the last few years. These flying machines, also known as drones, have captured the imagination of Silicon Valley geeks and anti-NSA activists paranoid about their privacy, and caused the US military some controversy. Fitted with a camera such as a GoPro, the media has also started using UAVs in innovative ways — getting top-view shots of chaotic protests, for example. Friendlier examples of the use of UAVs include capturing monkeys swinging about in forest trees in a panning motion for cutting-edge nature documentaries, capturing…

By Michelle Atagana: Managing Ed VentureBurn. Nigerian financial security app, i.Sec, has closed a US$10-million funding round with local private equity firm Synergy Capital, according to the company website. “…Synergy Capital, a Lagos, Nigeria financial advisory firm, and i.Sec are pleased to announce that they have entered into an Investment Agreement of up to US$10 million.” The startup has been operating in stealth mode for a while now, but is ready for its public launch in May. The actual terms of the deal is quite hush-hush and we have reached out to both parties for comment. The company refers to…

By Jacques Coetzee It’s no secret that South Africa’s ecommerce is on the verge of booming. With the industry said to be growing by 30% a year and the market estimated to be worth R4.4-billion in 2013, we can expect a lot of competition in this arena. The almost year-old Shopstar is one of those competitors — an ecommerce platform with a local twist that’s designed to allow anyone to create and manage their own online shop with minimal effort. Developed in Cape Town, it’s a homegrown solution for South Africa’s unique ecommerce requirements. After spending some time in Europe (the…

By Michelle Atagana: Managing Ed VentureBurn. According to a SENS announcement, because we track those now, Knife Capital has officially been acquired by African Dawn Capital Limited, a listed entity. “Shareholders are hereby advised that all the conditions precedent have been fulfilled and accordingly, the Knife Capital Acquisition will be implemented in accordance with the terms of the Agreement,” said the announcement today. We reported on the possible acquisition last year when the first SENS announcement was made but it looks like things are moving along swiftly. At its core, Africa Dawn Capital Limited provides various financial products and services…

 By Ronan Steyn Eugen Petersen,co-founder of  Rocket Internet’s Zando and a friend, Sheraan Amod co-founder of Personera, with the help from strategic advisor Randolf Jorberg, have launched Springlab, a new South African incubator aimed at “fostering entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa” by building highly scalable ventures. Based in Cape Town, Springlab claims unique features to separate itself from the incubator pack. Springlab co-founds every single venture it invests in — taking them right from, as Petersen tells Ventureburn, “the birth to baby steps, until it can run”. Working closely with ventures, Springlab will generally invest between R200 000 to R2 million for…

By Martin Carstens In a move to have a sustainable business model, charities are taking an increasingly entrepreneurial approach to sustaining their initiatives. One quick example is US-based MalaikaForLife, which runs an ecommerce store selling bracelets hand-made by a group of 150 women in Tanzania. MalaikaForLife’s proceeds go towards providing them with a source of sustainable income and for stamping out malaria in the region. Then there’s DoGoodBuyUs, a type of Etsy for charities, which stocks hundreds of charity made products. The trouble is that in order for a charity to produce these products, they need some kind of starting…

We can officially confirm that the African division of MIH, Naspers’ online investment arm is in the process of shutting down a number of its South African ecommerce properties. Yesterday we reported that the emerging markets internet and media giant was preparing to shut down a number of its smaller ecommerce properties, including online fashion outlet Style 36, digital camera store SAcamera and baby product outfit Kinderelo. Most of the sites affected are part of part of the company’s African Internet Accelerator (AIA) programme. AIA was founded in mid 2013 with a majority investment from MIH. Now however, it is…

Emerging markets media and internet giant Naspers looks set to shut down a number of ecommerce sites run by its online investment arm MIH. At least three of the sites affected are part of the company’s African Internet Accelerator (AIA) programme. Ventureburn sources say that the collapse of the sites will come with job losses and a major restructuring. According to a well placed source, a number of the South African ecommerce investments made by MIH in the last few years will be dissolved, with some parts being absorbed into larger Naspers players such as Kalahari. Update: A Ventureburn source…

Building a successful business is not easy, we all have heard that from a friend or at an event, and it is true. If you’re going to start an internet business in Nigeria, get ready to be screwed. That’s IROKO Partners‘ founder Jason Njoku’s biggest takeaway from the company’s journey since its inception. In the last three years, the company has become synonymous with Nigerian content using the infectiously popular Nollywood as a segue, but getting there hasn’t been particularly easy. The early days of the company mostly involved founder Njoku negotiating rights for movies in Nigeria. It’s a not…

MEDO, the South African development group last year offered entrepreneurs training as well as international exposure to business and investment partners. Last week, 12 businesses returned to South Africa from the International Trade Programme in the UK. After hundreds of entrepreneurs across South Africa applied for this opportunity, 14 were eventually chosen. The aim of the trip was to stimulate trade between these successful entrepreneurs and UK partners to further job creation in South Africa. This is the organisation’s third such endeavour and Bjarke Gotfredsen, Joint CEO & Co-founder of MEDO says, “Our first tour had a success rate of…