EasyEquities, whose goal it says is to “democratise investing” for everyone, was named the overall winner at last night’s MTN Business App of the Year Awards 2020.
It also scooped the award for the best consumer solution, and walked away with the overall grand prize of an international trip to Silicon Valley valued at R200 000.
A mobile app, EasyEquities aims to disrupt and remove the barriers to entry in local and international stock markets, according to the company.
In addition, it wants to make the purchase of shares safe, easy and fun, helping new and existing investors to stay on top of their investment portfolios, with detailed account overviews and personalised reporting.
Ahead of the overall winner announcement, Kholofelo Magagane, head of marketing at MTN SA Business, noted that one of the very few positives of the COVID-19 pandemic is that it helped and taught innovators and citizens alike to embrace digital transformation.
“It [COVID-19] has helped us to accelerate the digital transformation space in South Africa and it has helped to put Africa and South Africa on a global stage, competing like-for-like with global counterparts when it comes to digital solutions.
“We have seen innovative solutions winning tonight [Thursday], we have seen some innovations that have been rehashed and improved out of last year’s submissions, and we have seen innovation coming from young school girls and the youth at large. This shows the platform is growing and the movement of digital transformation in South Africa is a reality.”
“This is one of the best accolades that we could get and we are so proud of our team. EasyEquities is going up, we will get five million clients in the next two years,” said Almero Oosthuizen, VP at EasyEquities, accepting the night’s top honour.
Magagane congratulated EasyEquities, saying: “If 2020 has shown us anything, it’s that we need to keep track of our finances − and even take this a step further − by finding ways to help us build wealth.
“We’re also very excited about the other game-changing apps that took top honours across all of the categories. Our heartfelt congratulations go out to all the developers.”
Now in its ninth year, the MTN app awards seek to unearth innovative and customised apps that will create a distinct customer experience. Last night’s awards ceremony was held virtually because of the COVID-19 regulations in regards to public gatherings.
This year also saw the addition of the ‘best youth app’ category, with the three apps that were entered each receiving their share of R100 000.
The night’s other winners were:
- Best Women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics): Examsta
The first South African learning platform to focus on content-heavy subjects like geography and life sciences, cutting across the South African national and IEB curriculum. It enables learners to progress using gamification.
- Best Enterprise Solution: Checkers Sixty60
The online shopping app allows a team of in-store shoppers to simply scan each product displayed on the screen’s device to complete the customer’s order. The app facilitates thousands of orders every day.
- Best Incubated Solution: Technishen
An on-demand mobile platform where businesses and households can request support from a variety of technicians, ranging from IT support, electrical installation and maintenance, auto mechanics or plumbing services.
- Most Innovative Solution: BirdPro
An app for avid birdwatchers in SA, BirdPro provides users with what it says is the most sophisticated identification tool on the market. It can identify over 6 500 birds and includes more than 1 700 clear bird calls.
- Best Health Solution: Lexie Hearing
This app allows customers who have purchased a pair of Bluetooth Lexie hearing aids to customise their unique hearing profiles. A two-minute, clinically validated hearing check on the app automatically programmes the hearing aids based on results.
- Best Gaming Solution: League of Legends
This is an augmented reality game where a character appears and casts a spell or attacks another character, and solves a puzzle.
- Best Agricultural Solution: GreenFingers Mobile
This app replaces ‘pen and paper’ and agro-forestry management systems, enabling the digital management and finance of smallholder farmers, in various value chains, at scale. At its core, the platform allows field officers to collect farmer, household and transactional data.
- Best Educational Solution: Xitsonga Dictionary
This solution provides users with thousands of words translated from Xitsonga to English in a fun and intuitive way. The app also shares the wisdom of the Vatsonga people by providing access to proverbs and idioms.
- Best Financial Solution: StokFella
StokFella enables stokvels to manage, consolidate, communicate, visualise and analyse their stokvel activity financials and any other related stokvel matters.
- Best ‘South African’ App: Bottles
In partnership with Pick n Pay, the Bottles app offers same-day and next-day deliveries. Users can browse through more than 5 000 products, all at in-store pricing.
- Best Breakthrough Solution: Matric Live
Lesego Finger, a 21-year-old self-taught developer, developed the Matric Live app while still a student himself. With more than half a million users to date, Matric Live includes practice materials, study guides, learning resources and access to past papers for all grade 10 to 12 subjects.
- Best Youth App: Guardian Health
This solution consists of a patient app, a paramedic app and a management portal.
- A Huawei-sponsored category saw the My Pregnancy Journey app win
The app empowers pregnant women with everything they need to know.
- People’s Choice Award: Checkers Sixty60
* ITWeb sponsored the best gaming solution award.
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