GrindstoneX’s growth engineering program, which it runs in conjunction with Naspers Labs, has just announced its second cohort of ten female entrepreneurs.
Knife Capital and Thinkroom co-founded Grindstone in 2014 with the goal of helping innovation-driven, rapidly growing companies achieve business growth.
On the other hand, Naspers Labs is the youth development initiative of the multinational consumer internet company and technology investor, Naspers.
In South Africa, Grindstone Ventures is leading the charge to reduce the gender financing gap through gender-lens investing.
In the future, the Grindstone network may offer investment options or additional acceleration programs to companies that qualify through the GrindstoneX accelerator.
This year, ten South African businesses were chosen for the inaugural cohort, and ten more have been chosen for the second iteration.
Among them are;
- Ambani Africa, an educational gaming and streaming platform founded by Mukundi Lambani;
- Binase Corporation, an educational food, skincare, and travel experience founded by Nabo Binase;
- Featherlinx, founded by Meagan Chauke, is an ICT company that specializes in developing systems and applications for the vulnerable;
- HYHarvest is an agri-tech company founded by Zandile Khumalo.
- inJoin, a technology empowerment company founded by Naledi Sithole that provides cutting-edge technology and architecture to enable organizations to be data-informed and future-proof;
- Makhoba Professional Services is a networking and cabling internet services company founded by Thabile Makhoba;
- MobileGPT, a WhatsApp application that integrates the advanced capabilities of the GPT-4 engine to provide users with a personal AI assistant on the go, was founded by Bertha Kgokong.
- RealPPE Marketplace, a one-stop shop for medical professionals and industrial PPE buyers founded by Lebogang Mashaba;
- African Distribution Technologies, which uses website and app technologies to provide a B2B e-commerce platform to meet the needs of business owners in underserved areas and townships, was founded by Vani Jolly.
Check out the website for more information.
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