SA start-up takes off in Israeli embassy competition

DIANE WOLFSON

Multifractal challenged over 170 other South African young start-ups which entered this prestigious contest – and won. The theme of the competition was: “Innovating to make the world a better place”. 

Multifractal Semiconductor chief operating officer and co-founder, Nishant Singh, won an all-expenses paid trip to Israel to participate in the Tel Aviv Digital-Life-Design Innovation Festival in September. There, he will meet prospective investors and learn from leaders in the start-up ecosystem there.

“This is the fourth time we found South Africa’s best start-up via our Start-Up Tel Aviv South Africa contest,” Ambassador Arthur Lenk told the guests and finalists at the Innovation Hub in Pretoria last Wednesday. “Israel is proud to add value to the local start-up ecosystem and share some of Israel’s start-up nation culture.”

Singh explained that his start-up has developed complete transmission systems on a silicon chip. These systems will increase efficiency and throughput and will be an enabler of the huge amounts of data that will be transmitted in the future, he said. He believed this may also be the way to decrease costs of data, going forward.

In an Internet-of-things smart world, where everything is connected, including smart cities, smart buildings, smart cars, the amount of data a connected person will use, will be huge, maintained Singh.

“Wireless data traffic is projected to increase seven-fold from 2016 to 2021 and 1 000-fold by the year 2030,” said Singh.

In Israel in September he hopes to make contacts and form partnerships in innovation, which he believes will benefit all South Africans. In the short term, winning this competition will give him a great deal of confidence and recognition that the three years of hard work on this system will keep them going forward.

He hopes that this will bring in much needed investment to setting up offices in South Africa, where they can find and train apprentices to keep their business going for the future.

“We are so grateful to win this amazing opportunity, as all South Africans can benefit greatly from the Israeli ecosystem. We look forward to creating partnerships at the festival in Israel and learn from other entrepreneurs from all over the world,” said Singh. 

His co-founder, Piotr Osuch added: “It has been a long journey to get to where we are today and we hope to transfer this reward on to others and to continue to develop this product to make the world a better and more connected place.”

Second prize winner, Benji Meltzer from Cape Town, started Aerobotics, an engineering technology company. Using aerial data from various sources such as drones, to help specifically farmers (at this stage), to use patterns in data sources to identify problems and solutions early, such as disease, fertiliser and irrigation usage.

“Being a finalist has given us motivation to get recognition that we are doing this right,” said Meltzer.  He hopes to make contact with industries and technological companies in Israel to open doors for future progress and advancement. 

Together with his project partner, James Patterson, they are trying to “close our fundraising efforts”. They want to speak to some of their current clients and to keep building “as there is so much opportunity in this field”, said Meltzer, who is also hoping to attend the conference in Israel.

Tieho Tsiane, the third prize winner in the competition, started a technical app IN- Pocket while studying at the University of the Free State. IN- Pocket is a device that aims to assist disabled people to use their phones while in their pockets.

The device consists of hardware, which a disabled person can attach to his or her wheelchair or walking stick, to easily navigate their phones, using the hardware and a Bluetooth headset for listening purposes.   

Tsiane is thrilled to be in the top three and hopes to get exposure to the greater public. Through a local competition in the Free State and partnering with the Centre for Technology, he has already started the process of building a prototype of his product.

Past winners include: WhereIsMyTransport which has gone on to win two international awards and has opened a second office in London. Webfluential has expanded their footprint into the UK, Europe, the Middle East and South America and My30DayHealthCare which merged their company in October 2016 and is now known as Health Cloud, has made significant progress in the South African market.