22 SA-Founded Tech Companies To Inspire You In 2022

To celebrate the beginning of 2022, we are highlighting 22 inspiring SA-founded tech companies that are creating an impact in South Africa and globally, proving that coding can change the world.

Tech has the ability to transform and uplift South Africa. These companies have used their incredible talent, vision, and innovation in the realm of tech to create products and services that improve the lives of everyday South Africans.

Researching these innovative companies inspires us to become Software Developers, so we can get the opportunity to work for them one day. We hope they inspire you too!

Here’s more about each company.

Yoco: If payment is easy, small businesses make more sales

The expensive costs of traditional card machines meant that South African small businesses struggled to offer their clients a card payment solution, limiting their overall sales capabilities. Cue Yoco. Founded in 2012, Yoco is a proudly South African fintech company leading the way in breaking down barriers and making card machines and online payments affordable and accessible for small businesses. Yoco’s portable and easy-to-use card machines and online payment tools have enabled 200 000 businesses to grow and boost their revenue. With over $100 million investment, Yoco is thriving and expanding and playing their part in uplifting the South African economy.

Stitch: Enabling African fintech innovation

Every day, innovative African tech start-ups are launched. However, with fragmented infrastructure access across different regions, providers, banks, and other financial accounts, these companies often struggle to reach their digital potential. As former fintech founders, Stitch understands this problem and created a solution: API infrastructure to connect and give African fintech companies easy access to their users’ financial accounts. Instead of building bespoke integrations and stacks for their financial products, these companies can now use Stitch’s API instead — a game-changer for the African fintech industry! Starting in South Africa in early 2021 and expanding to Nigeria later that year, Stitch hopes to empower and democratise financial infrastructure and services all over Africa. As a result of their Pan African vision, innovation, and client-centric empathy, Stitch has received a $21 million Series A investment to help them further their reach into more African countries in 2022. We can’t wait to see what they do next!

Luno: Anyone can invest in crypto now

Founded in South Africa in 2013, Luno is a global cryptocurrency platform that aims to democratise cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, making them accessible to the everyday person. With the introduction of decentralised cryptocurrencies, Luno saw how the existing financial system didn’t cater to the new digital age. So they set out to upgrade the world to a better financial system suited to the needs of modern people looking to buy, save, and manage their cryptocurrency. In 2021, Luno reached over 9 million users showing how technology is helping the global economy grow.

Peach Payments: Making e-commerce easy

When Peach Payments started in 2011, they set out with an ambitious goal: to revolutionise the South African online payment space. And they’ve achieved it! Peach Payments are fintech frontrunners and were the first to offer one-click payments, subscription models, and mobile integration in South Africa. They offer merchants a secure online payment gateway that integrates seamlessly with their e-commerce sites, making online payments safe and easy for customers. Peach Payments take care of payment solutions so their merchants can focus on growing their businesses. Today, the company processes more than R1 Billion a month for their merchants.

Mama Money: Country borders no longer stop you sending money home

Mama Money is the mobile app making waves in the money transfer world. Founders Mathieu Coquillon and Raphael Grojnowski noticed how difficult it was for low-earning foreign nationals to send money home to their families in other countries. Thus Mama Money was formed to provide a safe, low-cost, and reliable way to send money across borders. Rather than charging exorbitant fees of up to 20% like some money transfer services, Mama Money chose to help those who don’t earn a lot by keeping their fees as low as 3%. Foreign nationals no longer need to worry about physically sending money with a driver over the border. Now, they can use the mobile app to securely transfer money to their loved ones for essentials like school fees and medical expenses. This social impact fintech company now enables money to be transferred digitally to over 50 countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Due to the pandemic, the need for digital money transfers increased exponentially, resulting in Mama Money growing by 500%.

FCB.ai: No more “Please hold”; AI that lets you talk to your bank

Is there anything worse than being put on hold when you’re trying to get support from your financial institution? Call centres are notoriously inefficient and expensive, and most customers really hate being put on hold. So FinChatBot, now FCB.ai, was born. FCB.ai is a fintech company that uses artificial intelligence to have dynamic human-like conversations instead of call centres. These chatbots have created a more fun and interactive experience for customers and helped financial and insurance brands with customer retention and convert more quotes. FCB.ai is proof of how AI is changing the way we do business.

Kudoti: A marketplace for recyclable waste

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. That’s a sentiment Kudoti founder Gift Lubele can get behind. He believes that there is value in waste and created Kudoti as a digital platform to manage waste in Africa. Lubele identified that the waste management industry in Africa is significantly under-utilised. So he designed his digital solution to help waste management companies extract more value from waste, become more efficient, and facilitate waste management solutions in areas that need it. In the future, Kudoti aims to expand their offering to enable users to resell recyclable waste and build a marketplace for recyclable materials.

Lumkani: Protection from the risk of shack fires

Fire can cause tremendous devastation, especially in densely populated communities like informal settlements, townships, and refugee camps. Lumkani is a social enterprise that has created an early warning, a communal fire alert. Their heat-detecting devices are networked within a 60-metre radius. If a fire occurs, all of the detectors in range will ring together, alerting the community and allowing them to take action quickly. Lumkani also offers affordable funeral and fire cover. Lumkani is more than just a fire protection company. They aim to help people in these disadvantaged communities break free of poverty and live safely through technological innovation and financial services.

Zenzeleni Community Networks: Internet connectivity for rural communities

Zenzeleni Community Networks is South Africa’s first cooperative-owned internet service provider and telecommunications network. Zenzeleni, meaning “Do it yourself” in isiXhosa, has always made serving the community the heart of everything they do. Started in 2012 through a partnership between UWC and the Mankosi community, Zenzeleni has evolved and expanded. Using solar-powered routers, they began as a local wireless intranet, which connected analogue phones to provide free voice calls in the community. Later they added an external internet connection to the village to allow the community to call national numbers, which used solar power stations to charge the phones. Now, Zenzeleni has an uncontended fibre connection to help businesses. Connecting the community has resulted in social and economic betterment, including providing internet to local schools allowing youths to apply for and receive tertiary education grants. The aim of Zenzeleni has always been to enrich the community, provide income opportunities, and offer the same opportunities to rural communities that people in cities receive through access to telecommunications and a good internet connection. Zenzeleni’s innovation has been recognised locally and internationally through support, investment, and awards.

OpenUp: Making data useful

OpenUp is a non-profit start-up that develops civic-tech projects that open up data for citizens. These projects provide everyday citizens with access to information and understanding that can improve their lives. Partnering with governments, organisations, and industry leaders, they create tools that make complex data simple for citizens to understand and apply to their lives. Some incredible tools they have developed through coding include a living wage calculator, a medicine price registry, and a South African budget portal.

WhereIsMyTransport: Making public transport less unpredictable for commuters

Imagine this: you know where you want to go, but you don’t know how to get there or how long it will take. This is the daily struggle for hundreds of millions of public transport commuters in South Africa and other emerging-market countries. The transport exists, but there is no central source of network maps or operational information that these commuters can check for updates on their mobile. WhereIsMyTransport saw this mobility data gap and has created a service offering digitised data to empower companies, institutions, and government agencies to help commuters overcome unpredictable public transport challenges. WhereIsMyTransport is using technology to create real-life solutions to public transport woes.

Aerobotics: Drones to help farmers make their land more productive

Using a combination of aeronautics and machine learning to create intelligent technology, Aerobotics aims to make the future of farming more fruitful and sustainable. They have created software using drone technology and artificial intelligence, which analyses aerial imagery of farms to detect pests and disease. This early detection allows for early intervention and helps fight crop loss. To date, their software has processed over 100 million trees and detected and sized over 1 million citrus fruits. Aerobotics are creating intelligent tools to aid farming and help feed the world.

Yuppiechef: Pioneers of SA e-commerce

Before Yuppiechef, South Africa’s e-commerce landscape was nonexistent. When Yuppiechef started in 2006, South Africans weren’t in the habit of making a payment to an ‘unknown’ online store. Yuppiechef slowly built trust with customers by putting the human element into e-commerce. One handwritten note at a time, they won the trust of South Africans and paved the way for e-commerce in South Africa. Today they have made their online store tangible with tech-powered brick and mortar stores in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Their hard work and innovation paid off when they were acquired  by Mr Price Group for R460 million.

Yebo Fresh: Even if you live in a township, you can get grocery deliveries to your door

Most food delivery services in South Africa don’t deliver to townships making getting fresh produce and groceries a hassle for township-dwellers who would have to venture outside their community and carry heavy grocery bags on public transport. Yebo Fresh is South Africa’s first e-commerce website that delivers fresh groceries and supplies safely and directly to your door in Cape Town and Jo’burg townships. With Yebo Fresh, households can order online, via Whatsapp, or over the phone with a call-back feature. During the initial COVID-19 lockdown, Yebo Fresh grew exponentially as the need to get food into the townships grew. They partnered with local NGOs and provided over 85 000 food parcels to people in need during the hard lockdown. Now they are expanding nationwide. Yebo Fresh is transforming the lives (and pantries) of township households through their brilliant tech-driven solutions.

Pelebox: Spend 2 minutes not 3,5 hours to get your medicine

Did you know that it takes an average of 3.5 hours to collect chronic medication from a public clinic in South Africa? That means that patients need to take time off from work to get the medication they need. Neo Hutiri, the founder of Pelebox, found this out for himself when he was diagnosed with TB and had to collect his own medication. Feeling frustrated, this electrical engineering graduate partnered with software developers to create Pelebox Smart Lockers: internet-enabled lockers that store repeat chronic medication. Instead of waiting in long queues, registered patients can now receive an OTP via SMS, key it into the locker, and pick up their prepackaged medication in less than 2 minutes. With the introduction of these lockers, clinics can now focus on seeing patients instead of dispensing medication, relieving the pressure on the already strained South African healthcare system.

Healthforce: Video consultations let you see the right Dr at the right time

Have you ever paid for a pricey GP visit and realised that you could’ve just seen a nurse? Healthforce identified that problem and came up with a brilliant tech-driven solution. With Healthforce, you can pop into a participating local clinic for the hands-on care of a nurse with access to a video consultation with a highly experienced doctor if needed. Through technology and nursing care, they aim to make healthcare more affordable, accessible, and efficient for South Africans. To date, Healthforce has handled over 1.5 million nurse consults and over 125 000 video consults with doctors.

hearX: Letting everyone be able to hear well

“Healthy hearing for everyone, everywhere” is the vision of HealthTech company hearX. Knowing how expensive specialist doctor’s visits are, hearX has created world-first digital hearing health solutions to make hearing healthcare more accessible and affordable. One of these smart solutions is the hearKiosk found in pharmacies, where people can do a self-test hearing screening in 2 minutes. The kiosk can connect directly to a hearing care provider for further assistance if needed. Through artificial intelligence, hearX is innovating the future of healthcare.

Hyrax Biosciences: The software that could detect Omicron

South Africa’s Hyrax Biosciences played a vital role in the early detection of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 using their Exatype software platform. This software enables the scaling-up of genomic surveillance so thousands of viral DNA sequences can be analysed simultaneously. Instead of a skilled bioinformatician manually analysing the genetic data, Exatype automates it, saving hundreds of hours and speeding up the process. Along with detecting COVID-19 variants, the Exatype software is being used to scale up the genetic analysis of HIV and infectious diseases globally. 

Uliza: Now businesses can communicate in your language, as well as English

Globally, a lack of literacy and language barriers make it difficult for people who use uncommon dialects to access important information. That’s where Uliza comes in. The Uliza founders realised that people of all dialects and literacy levels have access to phones but not information. So they set out to find a solution. Now, they provide translation, transcription, IVR, voice recognition services for businesses that need localised content for Africa and Asia. Using machine learning and the knowledge of over 900 language experts, they specialise in IVR so businesses can contact people using interactive phone calls in their own dialect and provide necessary information to people without English literacy.

Siyavula Education: Open resources to let students master mathematics

The heart of Siyavula Education is to make education and open educational resources accessible to anyone, no matter their socio-economic background. Since 2002 they have provided open textbooks to students from grades 4 to 12 both digitally and in print. Now they have evolved to include software and tools that enable effective learning and practicing for mastery, especially in subjects like Maths and Science, available on any web-enabled device. Using Creative Commons licensing and open-source code, Siyavula are opening up education to all South Africans.

Paper Video: Exam answers explained really well, no matter where you are

Many students don’t have access to good teachers. Paper Video gives each student the experience of having an excellent teacher explain an exam question to them. Here’s how it works: A student goes through a book of past exam papers, and every question is linked to a video solution taught by an experienced teacher, showing them how to go through the problem step-by-step. Every book contains links to literally hundreds of video solutions that amount to dozens of hours of teaching time, including explanations of the theory and concepts underlying the solution of a problem. Paper Video is like having your own personal teacher on call, 24/7! Any time. Any place.

Valenture Institute: Taking school online

Going to school used to mean walking down the road to your local neighbourhood school. But times have changed, and Valenture Institute is leading the way in taking South African and global schooling online. They believe in providing aspirational learning opportunities for students and have partnered with top education institutes to make online high school a reality. By removing the physical limitations of traditional schools, they are creating digital possibilities. One of their most exciting collaborations is with the University of Cape Town. Together they have founded the UCT Online High School. Along with creating online schools, they also support micro schools to provide a blended learning experience using an open-source high school curriculum for underprivileged communities.

Conclusion

Do you want to change the world with technology too? Do you aspire to work for one of these inspiring companies or launch your own start-up one day? Coding plays an integral part in each of these companies’ growth and success. So get a head start on your future by learning to code with CodeSpace Academy today.