A look at the 5 finalists as Startup Weekend Harare enters second day

Nigel Gambanga Avatar
EduZim at Startup Weekend Harare

The Startup Weekend Harare which started last night has continued into its second today with the five startup teams that were shortlisted working on their different concepts in preparation for tomorrow’s finals.

Throughout the day the teams have been involved in different stages of idea and concept improvement, with all the teams assigning different representatives to handle aspects like market validation, following up on leads for potential business and the development of minimum viable products.

Part of the activities for the day included a performance from local Hip Hop star Tehn Diamond who offered his own musical adaptation of elevator pitching laced with inspiration for entrepreneurs.

Tehn Diamond at Startup Weekend Harare
Tehn Diamond on “Elevator Pitching”

Here is a look at each of these teams and what they have been up to in the first 22 hours.

EduZim

EduZim at Startup Weekend Harare
The EduZim team

This was pitched as an online library and education facility. It will now extend its function to encompass peer to peer resource sharing between high schools and colleges.

Food Match

Food Match at Startup Weekend Harare
The Food Match team sharing their progress with their mentor

This team is working on an online platform that offers consumers discounts on food. This is achieved through a matching of retailers’ inventory that is losing value because of its perishable nature with the demand for this discounted food.

Getsi.co

Getsi.co at Startup Weekend Harare
Part of the Getsi.co team fine tuning their business model

This was originally called IsThereZESA.com and is an app that offers users notifcations of powercuts in their residential areas as well as schedules for power outages. The service is also meant to extend to industrial entities that want to monitor resource usage around power supply.

Mhuri Yedu

Startup Weekend Harare
Mhuri Yedu in one of the war rooms at Hypercube Hub

The team is developing a crowd funding platform for Cancer patients that are unable to raise the resources for treatment or surgery. It is geared at small individual contributions from the patient’s immediate community and well wishers online.

Rezident

Startup Weekend Harare
The Rezident team

This team has developed an online information centre for the City Council that offers information on municipal service delivery and acts as news centre for what the city council is involved in. It will give residents a platform to alert the council of poor or non-existent service delivery.

The winner of Startup Weekend Harare will be selected when these teams make their final pitches tomorrow afternoon.

Which idea or team do you think is the winner here?

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10 comments

  1. joel

    guys we need serious ideas… nothing add value from the list given

    1. TheKing

      I think this is a great start. Ideas will continue to improve as the teams get better at coding

    2. Des

      It is important to keep the ideas flowing for the stage of maturity of the Zim ecosystem. If one looks at the ideas in isolation it may be a challenge to identify the value add but if you start combining some of them you will start to see something special.

    3. Tongayi

      Thank you very much , my thoughts exactly.

  2. Itai

    Say I want baked beans… types foodmatch.co.zw… Whoa!! I discover Cashel Valley its $0.70 at Bon Marche Sam Levy because it expires in a week.

    But I live in Hatfield.

    This is incredibly useless and stupid.

    1. Anonymous

      from what i understand foodmatch buys the nearly expired products and sells them to vendors.The target market is low income earners.

  3. BullshitDetector 3.0

    This is really a waste of time coz non of these ideas are actually solving real problems or are useful and the sick part is you always the same people in these circles that’s why the ideas revolve around nothing. Seriously an app that tells if there is Zesa home lol you can just whatsapp a friend or something, Food match really ??????? we have brilliant ideas in zim please don’t disgrace the nation with this crap.
    I’m developing an app that detects Bullshit im sure its more useful than getsi.co or whatever

    1. Show me

      “I’m developing an app that detects Bullshit im sure its more useful than getsi.co or whatever” Really? Then pitch it next time, coz what Zim really needs are doers, not destructive armchair critics! Show us what you got!

      1. BullshitDectetor Beta version

        If you don’t get the irony in that then I’m sorry i can not help you. Zim needs capable doers who actually THINK and having working ideas. hazvibatsire Nyika izvi. destructive armchair critics kuita sei

  4. Anonymous

    I think this is a good start, as it has been shown worldwide, some start ups really make is big if they are done at the right time at the right place.I am sure Zimbabwe is no exception and we will see big things happening.However, we need ideas that work, that have real value to the targeted market.

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