88mph's seven selected start-ups for 2014

The program assists start-ups by giving them investment, access to business networks, technical infrastructure, workspace and the know how to quickly grow their businesses, in exchange for a small equity stake.

The start-ups are from a range of different fields within mobile tech. After three months of vetting over 300 applicants the list was successfully narrowed down to seven start-ups that solved a range of interesting problems.

Dan Bowyer, programme director, states, "This year we've invested in seven businesses from various sectors; pet food to dating, ad networks to cash collection. Right now the teams are working hard to release beta versions of their products to get market feedback.

The real work has begun for 88mph and the start-ups, who have to ensure that they are ready for Investor Day on 16 April. Here they will showcase their achievements to potential investors.

Selected start-ups for 2014

• Diarize.me: Founded by Mark Raa, diarize.me takes the hassle out of making an appointment. Any business can use diarize.me to better manage their diary, clients and inventory.

  Customers can find recommended businesses and make appointments instantly from anywhere where there is an internet connection.

  Diarize.me enables businesses to reward their customers through loyalty programmes and social gifting for their friends and family.

  When asked how the start-up makes money, Raa explains by charging businesses a monthly fee for use of the software. Its aim is to eliminate the paper-based appointment book. Raa says that they have tried to make it as simple as possible to use and especially when it comes to rewarding loyal customers, paper-based systems make it difficult to keep track of customers. Diarize.me solves this problem for businesses by default and enables them to set up great loyalty platforms.

  Customers are able to select the treatment that they want, select the staff member they want and then view which times are available on that specific staff member's schedule.

  At the moment the start-up is focussed on the beauty industry, but the idea behind the development of the platform is that it extends into other applications as well, so not only hair salons and day spas, but any business that is appointment based.

  

• Catch: Founded by Aidan Classe, Catch is an app that makes it easy to connect before, during and after an event.

  It's an iOS and Android app that makes it easy to meet people in real life. It enables people to see who's attending the same events as them and they can select who they want to meet. If the feeling is mutual, Catch connects the two people. Classe says Catch closes the gap which other online dating sites and apps like Tinder leaves open by positioning events and nightlife as a place to meet in real life.

  The app is connected to Facebook which means that two people who are interested in meeting each other can see which friends and interests they have in common.

  

• Pet Heaven: Headed by ex-Microsoft Courtenay Farquharson, Pet Heaven is a scheduled pet food and treats delivery service. Customers can select their pet's favourites, pick the frequency, and then relax in the knowledge that they will turn up on time, every time.

  Farquharson says the idea behind Pet Heaven is that it's a very inconvenient product and it's something that people with pets need every month. It enables customers to set the actual delivery schedule that they want because every pet has different needs and eating schedules. It's also a very heavy product and often vet shops are not open or conveniently located next to your local Pick n Pay.

  He says that eventually things like accessories, toys, treats, pet insurance, pet grooming and other veterinary services can all be bolted on to the initial offering.

  First off Pet Heaven wants to learn about its customers, what kind of pets they have and what they are feeding their pets. From there on it can start tailoring different things for different customers.

  Farquharson feels that building a community around what they are doing is going to be very important. People love their pets and he says that he doesn't just want to sell them pet food - he wants to build a pet community which just so happens to sell pet food.

  

• Ekaya: Developed by Justin R. Melville, Ruark Ferreira and Rudolf Vavruch, Ekaya is a radical new marketplace that matches great landlords with great tenants - making renting easier, quicker, more affordable and secure.

  Melville explains that its influences have been platforms like Airbnb, online dating sites, Gumtree and OLX.

  He says they initially joined the 88mph programme with a product that would help surface and find show houses on a Sunday. "A very good idea, but a very bad business," he says. The strategy was tweaked, but the initial vision stayed the same as the Ekaya team's passion is to create great software and build great apps.

  In addition, they are currently working on developing a new product - an insurance style policy which will replace the idea of a rental deposit.

  

• Graphflow: Graphflow, founded by Nick Pentreath and Robert Elliot, is a recommendation engine for mobile and ecommerce. It uses big data and machine learning to generate user-centric recommendations and targeting, customer intelligence, and data visualisation for online businesses.

  Graphflow matches people with relevant content and products at the right time across multiple channels. Elliot says that their start-up is taking what Amazon, the first mover into this market, has done and wrapping it up into a service that they can provide to businesses in the retail space across multiple channels.

  They provide the service online for ecommerce stores, in the mobile digital content arena, loyalty programmes, offline businesses and couponing programmes.

  "There is a global talent shortage in data visualisation, data processing, data science and big data," says Pentreath. "So the medium to smaller businesses would find it more cost effective to go with a service like Graphlow."

  The start-up's goal is to provide the thought-leadership on recommendations in the market.

  

• Byte Money: Craig Peacock and Juan-Marc Naude from Byte Money specialise in the receipting and allocation of funeral insurance policies in the field, using a POS mobile handset.

  Says Naude, "Every month R2.5 billion is collected and receipted in cash for the funeral industry in South Africa using hand written receipts and receipt books. 35% of that money is lost due to fraud, theft or bad administration."

  Byte Money provides a solution to dramatically reduce that theft by deploying a highly scalable platform and a handheld terminal which is basically an electronic receipt book. Byte Money receipts the cash and allocates it to the insurance back-end software instantaneously.

  What is unique about the system is that it integrates with multiple software providers as well as multiple insurance companies' back-end systems.

  

• 8Bit: Tom Kennedy (founder) and CTO Rich Huth of 8Bit have developed a highly adaptive premium ad network platform that connects leading brands with independent publishers, to create extremely engaging ROI focused campaigns.

  After seeing that advertisers wanted to advertise on his blog, Don't Party, often asking Kennedy how to get in touch with other bloggers, he created a virtual agency/entity to represent independent bloggers. The start-up is represented by 22 bloggers and one of its initial goals was to formalise a structure to get these blogs growing as many blogs hit a ceiling and feel they can't grow anymore.

  They started developing tools to give to the sites to help them build. The first thing they built was a widget called 8Bit Engage which incorporates "more from around the web" which helps feed traffic from around its network.

Near-future plans

88mph has raised US$1.5 million to go into Nigeria from 1 September when it will launch the programme there. The challenges the programme might face there, says Buch, "would most probably be cost of space and the cost of internet... logistics is just so expensive there, for example rent. There are just very fundamental infrastructure challenges for the start-ups... You will probably need much more money to get a Nigerian start-up compared to Cape Town where everything is quite cheap."

The start-ups have an emerging market focus and according to Buch "It would be easier to introduce them in Africa since they are based in South Africa and us having a network in Nigeria and Kenya would make it easier to introduce it there than it would in the US."

"88mph's strategy in Africa is to fund strong teams with great mobile-web ideas that have the ability to scale across emerging markets," concludes Bowyer.

The overall feeling from the 88mph programme participants is that they are benefiting hugely from it - especially when it comes to the mentorship they are receiving.