This year the Bertha Centre’s SAB Student Seed Fund formed part of The Leopards Lair 2021 Student Entrepreneurship competition in partnership with the University of Cape Town and Akro Capital. The competition sees the university’s most innovative brains battle it out to showcase their creative and solution-based business ideas and product inventions and we awarded funding to five social entrepreneurs for their innovative solutions. 

The winners of the SAB Student Fund were were as follows:

• Mandla Health: Siyavuya Fikamva, Mark Verryn, Nkanyiso Hadebe (Dr), & Gilad Shorer. 

Winners of the Social Innovation category, this mobile health (mhealth) app is designed to empower patients in the public health sector by eradicating challenges such as access, language barriers and short consultation times. This is in part achieved by creating a library of medical conditions and a medication management tool.

• Mandla Money: Julian Kanjere.

Aiming to foster financial inclusion and boost economic participation by providing a blockchain enabled financial service accessed via mobile phones and web apps  (participated in the Social Innovation Post Ideation category). Their ‘Mandla Wallet’ offering allows users to send and receive digital assets via WhatsApp or SMS in a fast and affordable manner - it helps users save on data and storage costs usually required by mobile apps. 

• Strapp: Darren de Abreu and Jamie Seymour.

A peer- to- peer rental marketplace that allows people to rent out what they don’t often use to others on a safe and secure platform. Building a transactional community, it enables users to be part of a sharing community, based on trust. 

• Kwela Brews: Reitumetse Kholumo

Creating a traditional African beer, which is naturally nutritious, high in vitamin B and contains good bacteria. They provide an efficient and hygienic solution for homebrewers by providing a low-cost, self-cleaning brewing machine which optimizes the use of ingredients - while reducing the brewing time through automation. 

• Africanize: Khaya (CEO), Gcina (COO), Siphesihle (CFO), Siba (CGO)

Africanize is a food delivery platform that supports small scale foodies, kitchens and restaurants that want to grow into a full-on restaurant and is seeking clients. Orders can be made anywhere within Cape Town (no radius limitations) and it does not follow a quick service model.