Barclays Group and Techstars have announced the ten companies in the 2017 Barclays Accelerator Cape Town Class.
This is the second class of the Barclays Accelerator. Applications opened in November 2016 and were received from 52 countries across the globe and across a wide array of innovative Fintech companies.
The 2017 programme participants are: Flexpay, Howler, Spatialedge, Abe.ai, The Sun Exchange, Byte Money , Avenews-GT , FOMO Travel, KapitalWise and eCOIDA.
These companies will now have the opportunity to work together with Barclays Africa Group and potentially gain access to their footprint comprising close to 12 million customers in ten African markets, while gaining access to the Techstars worldwide network to help accelerate their growth and global expansion.
“Each of the ten successful companies have an amazing founding team and unique solution that we believe has the potential to become a significant and relevant player on a global scale. We are extremely impressed with the quality of this class’ founders, many of whom are on their second or third business.”
“We’d like to extend thanks to our expert mentors, Rise partners in Tel Aviv, London and New York and Techstars Alumni for helping us find such an incredible group of founders.” -Yossi Hasson, Managing Director of the Barclays Accelerator.
The 2017 programme participants are:
Abe.ai (USA): Designs artificial intelligence solutions for the banking industry, helping banks better engage and support their customers at scale; significantly reducing the costs of servicing and acquiring customers through the use of chatbots.
FOMO Group (SA): Africa’s first B2B, B2C company that facilities the travel industry by providing an alternative payment solution for keen travellers who wish to travel without the use of credit or immediate payment
Avenews-GT (ISRAEL): Designed a digital trading platform based on blockchain technology, modernising agricultural trade by connecting food wholesalers to food producers directly, reducing distribution costs, creating financial security, and providing chain transparency.
Byte Money (SA): Provides solutions that help avoid mismanagement of payments in the ‘informal finance sector’. Byte Money taps into and revolutionises existing third-world payment channels and integrates them with first-world technologies.
Flexpay (Kenya): Provides an automated and secured layaway system that manages the purchase of goods. Customers can choose to pay for goods over varying periods of time.
Howler (SA): Provides an event commerce platform. Howler is the consolidation of three powerful events and entertainment platforms, designed at the highest benchmark of service and technology, helping consumers and event organisers to make moments that matter.
Spatialedge (SA): Focused on consumer analytics and targeting. Using a proprietary consumer database, Spatialedge enriches and verifies clients’ customers by spatially locating them, mapping them, and use advanced analytics to help clients locate and target new customers.
Kapitalwise (US): Simplifies the investment process for millennials by automating their investment decisions using machine learning and predictive analytics.
eCOIDA (SA): eCOIDA is an online insurance technology platform; a central database that connects all role players in real-time, creating an accurate workflow, fraud-free, paperless claims-processing platform.
The Sun Exchange (SA): The Sun Exchange enables anyone anywhere to own and earn from solar panels powering Africa, India and other developing economies. The exchange allows for collaborative solar finance using blockchain.
