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Spotlight on Eastern Cape start-up

Simnikiwe Mzekandaba
By Simnikiwe Mzekandaba, IT in government editor
Johannesburg, 23 Sept 2016
Co-founder and CEO of Tuse, Sabelo Sibanda, looks forward to sharing his company's innovation with companies on the continent.
Co-founder and CEO of Tuse, Sabelo Sibanda, looks forward to sharing his company's innovation with companies on the continent.

Port Elizabeth-based enterprise mobility company, Tuse will showcase its business offering at this year's Aspiring Innovators Programme in Cape Town.

The Aspiring Innovators Programme is a Gartner Africa Symposium/ITxpo initiative that allows African technology companies to showcase their solutions to enterprise organisations. Gartner launched the programme in 2015 to support the start-up scene and provide access to innovative local technology providers.

The Tuse application, which launched last year, is an Android app that allows people to communicate freely without the need for traditional telecommunication infrastructure. The app allows a user's mobile device to become a node in a wireless mesh network. On this wireless mesh network, users may send free messages, free calls or transfer files to other peers for free.

Speaking about Tuse, co-founder and CEO Sabelo Sibanda says the app offers a distinct advantage in that it can work in places without signal and users can make calls to landlines as well as smartphones.

"Tuse offers enterprise mobility in a variety of situations, most notably, in places with no signal," he says.

He adds: "The founding of Tuse last year was in response to the huge gaps that exist in enterprise mobility and connectivity - particularly in the developing world."

Sibanda, who hails from Port Elizabeth and studied commerce at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, says access to local finance has been the main challenge in establishing the start-up.

"That is why we had our excursion to Silicon Valley where we had a bit more luck in that regard," he says. Last year, Sibanda and his business partners were invited on a one-month trip to visit Silicon Valley.

He explains: "We were the first African start-up to be invited to join the Founders Space Accelerator, we were the first South African start-up to receive pre-seed funding from the Tim Draper Venture Capital fund for high potential African start-ups and we are finalists in the SAB Social Innovation Awards - all in this year."

"It is an incredible honour to be recognised as one the Gartner Symposium Aspiring Innovators. We are looking forward to sharing our innovation with the largest companies on the continent," concludes Sibanda.

The Gartner Africa Symposium will take place in Cape Town from 26 to 28 September.

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