Recycling rewards startup Regenize has been named winner of the Cape Town leg of the DEMO Africa Innovation Tour, and will now compete against the winners from Johannesburg, Botswana and Zimbabwe for a place at the main event.
Disrupt Africa reported in March this year’s DEMO Africa would take place in Casablanca for the first time after previous editions in Nairobi, Lagos and Johannesburg.
The startup launchpad competition – which has just announced it is launching a US$100 million investment fund – is visiting a host of cities across the continent to select startups for the event, and has already named winners in Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Johannesburg, Morocco, Nigeria, Ghana and Ivory Coast.
The Cape Town event, hosted by Legazy and DEMO Africa at the UCT Solution Space, saw nine startups pitch, with Regenize named overall winner, beating off competition from fellow finalists Kazi and Akiba. The startup uses an app to conduct efficient recycling collection and rewards people with its own cryptocurrency.
“With Cape Town having a far more active startup ecosystem than Johannesburg, it was not a challenge in having our developed, profitable and impactful startups pitch. Regenize, Kazi and Akiba all closely contested the number one spot. But it was Regenize with a great green and gamification element that won,” commented Zuko Tisani.
Regenzie will join Loyal1 and GetHosted – the Johannesburg winners – and SMART Connect of Zimbabwe, plus the winner of the upcoming Botswana event, for the chance to represent the region at the main event on October 18-19, where participating startups will be provided with resources worth over US$150,000, including US$120,000 in software tools from Microsoft and US$15,000 from AWS.
Applications to take part at DEMO Africa close on July 15.
