Executives help entrepreneurs to shape their businesses

Cape Town - Nedbank executives recently spent the day providing entrepreneurs with insights, tips, questions and recommendations to shape their businesses and get them closer to realising their goals.

Each start-up company was afforded 45 minutes not only to pitch their FinTech or technologically driven businesses, but to also engage in robust debate about opportunities and challenges they may face in scaling and commercialising these in market.  The ideas ranged from loyalty, online higher education, an informal labour market, alternative payment solutions, storage services and a host of other topics in-between.
 
“It’s not every day that you get to sit with senior banking experts and get such great advice. Today was an eye opener. We will build on what we have learnt and ensure that we add value to our business and partners,” said Yolisa Nocanda, co-founding member of FingerTips, a start-up with a payment system for students.  
 
The entrepreneurs are part of the Nedbank LaunchLab, which is a Stellenbosch University business incubator. The LaunchLab is funded in by Nedbank and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

Incubator

Since inception in 2015, the incubator has nurtured more than 100 emerging companies, with 60% of them now commercially viable and having created more than 250 jobs in the process.

“South Africa’s unemployment rate is amongst the highest the world. The role that government and the private sector has to play has never been greater. However, it is the entrepreneurs that are going to create the jobs," said Chris Wood, Nedbank executive for emerging payments and strategy.

"Remaining true to our brand purpose of using our money expertise to do good; our role is to provide them with guidance, support and connected eco-systems. Nedbank has many partners in different sectors and our ability to connect the dots between these and the entrepreneurs in our LaunchLab ecosystem, is one we are very proud of.”

Designed to inspire and drive a healthy and sustainable entrepreneurial culture, the LaunchLab is active across all four universities in the Western Cape and not only incubates student ventures and university spin-offs, but also entrepreneurs from the broader community.

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