Author: Staff Writer
As expected Transaction Capital announced today it is increasing its shareholding in WeBuyCars, a South African online car marketplace. The JSE-listed company disclosed 15 days ago its intention to up the stake. Transaction Capital has concluded agreements to increase the group’s shareholding in WeBuyCars from 49.9% to 74.9%. The remaining 25.1% of the shares in WeBuyCars will be held by the family trusts of the founding shareholders, Faan and Dirk van der Walt. The group expects the additional investment of 25% in WeBuyCars which is subject to Competition Commission approval, to be immediately value and earnings accretive. Once the conditions…
South African biotech startup LifeQ has secured $47 million from top investors around the world. LifeQ has two key value propositions: enabling wearable devices to provide business-grade and near clinical-grade health information streams; and using this data to generate health and wellness solutions for consumer, business and clinical applications. “LifeQ is proud to partner with the world’s most distinguished investment groups to positively impact the future of health for all people,” said LifeQ co-founder and CEO Laurence Olivier. “We are in the midst of a global health crisis caused by sedentary lifestyle, increased work demands, and unhealthy foods resulting in…
Remote and blended learning during the pandemic spurred growth even further, but according to Snapplify, the EdTech company was seeing business expansion long before COVID-19. Snapplify is a global EdTech company that specialises in enabling digital learning for individuals and institutions (B2C). It also has the capacity to provide other education businesses with software solutions to assist in expanding their businesses even further (B2B). “Towards the end of 2018, we launched our freemium offering for our e-learning platform, Snapplify Engage. The response was overwhelmingly positive, with hundreds of new registrations each day from schools across Africa,” enthuses Wesley Lynch, founder…
As South Africans ease into Winter, more and more people will seek the comfort of indoor entertainment. To carry fans through the chilly season, Spotify is launching new offers for its free and first-time users to enjoy the benefits of a Premium account. Starting today, Spotify Premium is offering three months free to eligible free and first time-users for the Individual Premium plan. For those who are missing their Individual Premium plan and cancelled for one reason or another, Spotify Premium is offering three months for just R59.99. Spotify Premium gives subscribers an audio streaming experience with ad-free music listening,…
As companies forge ahead with their digital transformation, many are inadvertently excluding large parts of their customer base who don’t own smartphones, alienating vital demographics and crippling their digital inclusion agendas. A technology they should not forego is USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) – a technology that is not outdated even if it’s more than two decades old. “Far too often we see companies, in select markets, inadvertently, omit large parts of their customer base by overlooking USSD as a service from their channel offering,” says Jeppe Dorff, Clickatell Chief Product and Technology Officer. “USSD is an incredible technology that…
Satellite internet connectivity has been available for some years across much of Africa and has become established as a good option for remote business locations (such as mines, lodges and farms) looking for reliable connectivity in areas not typically serviced by fibre or LTE. The launch of new satellite networks has brought this technology back into focus but, has also reignited the debate around latency – an issue which many customers still seem to associate with satellite internet services. “We welcome the buzz surrounding new international entrants into the market, and we are confident it will translate into an increased…
Your smartphone app has just notified you that Eskom will be switching off the lights within the next hour, and your suburb is at the top of the list. Since you’ve just purchased your first electric vehicle (EV), should you be worried that you’ll be twiddling your thumbs until the electricity supply is restored? The short answer is, no! While there is certainly a degree of inconvenience that comes with load-shedding, the truth is that typical EV usage isn’t impacted much by scheduled blackouts. In South Africa and around the world, electricity consumption normally peaks in the morning and evening,…
Gerhard Fourie has been appointed Channel Lead at Commvault Africa, a global enterprise software leader in the management of data across cloud and on-premises environments. He will oversee a drive for growth across the company’s recently expanded region that includes the entire African continent (excluding Egypt) and the Indian Ocean Islands, positioning the company as the leading data management partner of choice. Fourie joined Commvault in June 2016 as Channel Manager for South Africa, and says of his new position. “I am excited to concentrate on optimising our distribution landscape and increasing our resource coverage throughout the entire expanded region,”…
Today HP Inc. launched its new, comprehensive, digital teaching and learning programme, HP Digitally Advanced Schools, in key markets in the Middle East and Africa. The initiative brings together the complete education ecosystem by integrating three components: devices, solutions and capabilities, all under the HP brand. Blending hardware and advanced pedagogy technologies into school curriculums, the programme ensures an impactful, immersive teaching and learning experience for both students and faculty members, the need for which has been accelerated by the pandemic. The HP Digitally Advanced Schools programme consists of: Intel-powered HP Notebooks: This includes using a range of HP’s specially…
A food app that connects users with the specials at restaurants or events has started to gain traction and has obtained 50 000 downloads in the last five months. Fomo uses geolocation to show users specials available at nearby restaurateurs listed on the app. Co-founders Ryan Marx and Jax Du Plessis birthed the idea for the app after a night out. After having gone out for supper and left the restaurant, they saw specials available in at a different restaurant in the same area and wished they had gone there instead – hence the name of the app, Fomo (fear…