App creators have until 6 September to enter the seventh annual MTN Business App of the Year Awards, which will be presented in October.
The overall winner will walk away with a trip to Silicon Valley to the value of R200 000.
There are several categories, including: best enterprise app, most innovative app, best 'women in STEM' developer, best agricultural app and best financial app.
Previous winners have gone on to secure further investments and some have become commonly used today.
Most notably: online payment portal SnapScap, which won in 2013 and was then acquired by Standard Bank; on-demand delivery start-up WumDrop won best enterprise app in 2015 and has since signed deals with Makro and TFG; and Domestly, which received the best consumer app in 2016. It created 600 jobs within six months of going live.
The awards recognise apps creating innovative solutions that solve problems using technology.
Wanda Matandela, chief enterprise business officer of MTN Business SA, says: "The MTN Business App of the Year Awards is an accelerator for innovators and entrepreneurs to not only create solutions that assist society, but also to launch and grow sustainable businesses.
"These are businesses that will provide pioneering solutions to customers, contribute to economic growth, and create much-needed employment opportunities."
Last year, identity management app Intergreatme won the award for the most innovative solution. It aims to make filling out forms, providing documents and validating them a one-tap process.
The app securely holds all personal information about a user, and any certified documents they may need, in one place so they never have to fill out a form again.
Co-founder and CEO Luke Warner got frustrated with having to fill in multiple forms and provide certified identification documents when he needed to be admitted to hospital.
He thought there must be an easier way to instantly share this information digitally, and came up with Intergreatme, which now has around 5 000 users.
"KYC, or know your customer, is the first step in many commercial transactions with banks, telcos, insurance companies, credit providers and even hospital services. They generally all have an application form and want some supporting documents and they validate them before they can help you," says Warner.
"We want to make that whole process of filling out forms, providing documents and validating them a one-tap process so your information just goes straight through to the service provider and you are on-boarded instantly so that you never have to fill out a form again."
The app features pre-populated car and driver's licence renewal forms, allowing users to renew and pay for their car licence disc for certain licence plate numbers and have them delivered to their door. There is a service fee of R199.
Frist National Bank offers a similar service within its app, but requires users to be customers to make use of it.
Intergreatme hopes to keep adding more government forms. Private companies and doctors are able to add their own forms.
The Johannesburg-based start-up is funded by angel investors. The app is available free of charge for Android and Apple smartphone users.
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