The Gartner Aspiring Innovators for 2017
For the third time, we ran a programme at this year’s Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Cape Town that highlights local high tech startups from Africa. We asked on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook for companies doing interesting things, and selected six out of the 30 proposals submitted to highlight at the event. We were not necessarily looking for the best vendors out there, but wanted an interesting sample of what was going on in the startup scene in Africa. I think we achieved that.
The vendors chosen reflected themes from the overall event well, with two of them focusing on digital security, and one on tackling the skills and talent crisis through training. Others focus on specific issues faced by African organizations with approachable technology that addresses everyday barriers.
We asked the startups to create a short video introducing themselves and their product, and to be present at an ITxpo stand to talk to delegates. The traffic to the stand was encouraging.
Here are links to the videos created by the participating aspiring innovators.
Hyperion Development: Online training for individual and staff development.
CygniFyID: Biometric security.
BigInja: Barcode scanning integration with enterprise applications
Electrum: Payment switch (with my apologies for showing the wrong version during the presentation)
Flow Software: BI and analytics of operational data
ThisIsMe: Identity verification and brokering.