South African home-cleaning service, SweepSouth has been selected in Silicon Valley-based venture capital fund and start-up accelerator, 500 Startups.
This is the first time a local company has been selected by 500 Startups, with only a handful of African companies being chosen to join the programme in the past.
SweepSouth, which was launched in 2014, enables its customers to book home cleaning services digitally through a phone, tablet or computer.
The start-up says through its Uber-style online booking platform, the advanced matching and rating algorithm increases the chances of an immediately happy and productive relationship between cleaners and clients. It operates in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria.
SweepSouth was selected together with a batch of 14 other start-ups. Of thousands of applicants for each batch, only 2% are successful, and the prestigious and effective four-month accelerator programme also comes with $125 000 in funding.
In the past five years, 500 Startups, led by Silicon Valley veteran Dave McClure, has invested in 1 000 companies and backed a number of well-known companies such as TaskRabbit, Twilio and Gyft.
Alen Ribic, SweepSouth's CTO, who is currently working with 500 Startups' at their San Francisco offices says: "We are meeting some of the smartest people in the industry who understand and have experience in taking a company like SweepSouth from thousands of transactions a month to hundreds of thousands."
Says Aisha Pandor, CEO of SweepSouth: "The focus of the next four months is clear - achieve exponential growth and present our achievements in front of some of the top investors and media houses in the world. Each week we are exposed to more impressive mentors and each week our, and their, expectations grow. It's exhilarating in a terrifying way."
Chairman of Silicon Cape, Dan Guasco, says this is a momentous occasion in Africa's fast emerging tech ecosystem.
"While there have been a number of substantial exits to global companies like Visa, Garmin, Groupon, Verisign, GE, First Data, and WPP, there has been little recognition or support for early stage start-ups," Guasco notes.
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