Venture capital (VC) company Knife Capital today announced the names of the 10 companies selected for its fifth Grindstone Accelerator programme.
The names of the companies — which include a data analytics and marketing automation tool, a startup in the mobility sector and an Internet of Things (IoT) point of sale solution — were revealed at an event held at Deloitte’s Green Room in Johannesburg (with attendees pictured above).
Grindstone, which is jointly owned by Knife Capital and Thinkroom Consulting, assists high-growth innovation-driven small businesses to become sustainable and fundable through a year-long programme. This latest cohort is sponsored by the SA SME Fund and Deloitte.
For perhaps the first time in the history of the accelerator programme, which was first run in 2014, black-owned companies make up the majority of the participants of this cohort.
The accelerator has run three cohorts so far. In November last year Knife Capital announced the names of those selected for a fourth cohort which is currently under way (see this story). So far all the cohorts have been run in Cape Town. This is the first time a programme will be run in Gauteng.
Knife Capital today announced the names of the 10 companies selected for its fifth Grindstone Accelerator
While Knife Capital launched a call for applications in March, which closed on 22 April, the VC’s partner Keet van Zyl today told Ventureburn that the 10 companies were chosen from 400 applications.
Here are the 10 companies that have been selected for the fifth cohort:
LeadRobot is a Joburg-based startup founded in August last year by Daniel and Devon Solomon. The startup has developed a data analytics and marketing automation tool that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to enrich, cleanse and predictively score incoming leads in real time to empower sales and marketing technologies and teams.
Crayon is a Joburg based talent-sourcing platform, founded in February last year by Derrick Carolin, is designed from the bottom up to ensure candidates leave feeling reinvigorated and employers hire right, first time.
Farosian is a Joburg based specialist social media company founded in 2015 by CEO Farhad Bhyat.
MSat Global is a Joburg based digital satellite and IP technology solutions founded in 2007 by CEO Zweli Mkhuma.
Lüla and its app (its name means “easy” in isiZulu) connects corporate commuters to private shuttles. Lüla was founded by Xabiso Nodada and Velani Mboweni (the nephew of Finance Minister Tito Mboweni). The Cape Town based startup is currently running a campaign to raise R2.5-million in return for giving up an 8.5% equity stake, through local equity crowdfunding platform Uprise.Africa. With nine days to go it’s raised R353 000.
Marc1 is an Johannesburg based Internet of Things (IoT) point of sale solution that tracks customer mobile and wifi footprint to help retail companies sell more. In August last year the startup won the award for best commercial IoT solution at the third annual MTN Business IoT Conference
Ashanti-AI helps businesses to solve their problems. The Joburg-based company mainly focus on data engineering, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI).
For more information contact Ashanti AI on 011 712 1300, info@ashanti.ai or visit our website www.ashanti.ai
Source: Ventureburn
