The three winners of the inaugural R5-million Hack.Jozi Challenge were announced earlier this month at a formal awards ceremony in Johannesburg, following five months of competition among the 140 participants.

The Hack.Jozi Challenge is a competition for Johannesburg-based start-up entrepreneurs who help foster skills, innovation and entrepreneurship in digital technology. The competition also aims to support capacity development, job creation, enterprise development and, particularly, small business.

For the challenge, the City of Johannesburg partnered with the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE), which is based at Wits, and school for entrepreneurs Seed Academy.

Johannesburg Mayor Parks Tau launched the hack-a-thon in 2014 to encourage citizens to create innovative ideas through digital formats to solve some of the city’s challenges.

The City of Johannesburg awarded R5-million in cash and support to the winners of the challenge at the ceremony, which was attended by Tau, the City of Johannesburg Department for Economic Development and Tourism executive director Ravi Naidoo and JCSE director Barry Dwolatzky.

Tau said during the event that Hack.Jozi was part of a grand plan that would result in thousands of new digital entrepreneurs rising from informal settlements to unlock value, open new markets and build broad-based prosperity.

The winner of the Hack.Jozi Challenge, as well as the R1-million prize, was the white-label digital marketing solution PopApp Deals created by moWallet founder and chief technical officer Desmond Mongwe.

The application aims to improve the competitiveness of township businesses by enabling retail brands to offer incentives to customers to buy their brands from spaza shops.

Users of PopApp Deals dial an unstructured supplementary services data (USSD) code to access the PopApp Deals menu and follow the USSD instructions. They then receive a confirmation message with a unique coupon number, which they can redeem by visiting any participating spaza shop.

Mongwe says it is a growth opportunity just to be in the top ten. “We have learnt a lot from our training and preparation, and also from the companies that have been involved. They have shared ideas to help prepare us to create something that could potentially be used in the City of Johannesburg area.”

Lazy Lizzard founder and CEO Niel Pieters, the runner-up, received R350 000 for his educational app, the Teachinator, which enables learners to work through their schoolwork independent of parents and teachers.

The app runs on mobile devices and is aligned with the South African schools curriculum, while it works seamlessly with its administration website to help parents track their children’s homework progress. It also enables parents to set homework for their children on the app.

“I did not realise that the need for my product was as well defined as it is, or as big or encompassing as it is – that is something I would not have got had I not taken part in Hack.Jozi. “Having to go through an entire process with all the teams and with the top ten teams being fantastic is second to none – it is something I really enjoyed. It is a lot of hard work and I am extremely proud,” says Pieters.

Third place, as well as R35 000, was awarded to the MoveThisStuff quoting and logistics engine, which provides free quotes and free move-coordination for the public.

MoveThisStuff founder and CEO Percy Lawrence explains that the logistics platform was designed to be a google-for-logistics platform for South Africans.

Users of the MoveThisStuff website are introduced to a user-friendly interface, which they can navigate to book a rental vehicle or move property for private and corporate needs.

“It is real time, instant and long-term. MoveThisStuff provides a quote in half a second. We are the first automated quoting system that makes key business decisions for a company unsupervised. “Our system also coordinates load pickups and drop-offs to reduce costs for transport and logistics companies,” explains Lawrence.

He adds that the Hack.Jozi Challenge is helpful in learning how to launch a business; so too are some of the guidelines needed in terms of direction and strategy for marketing and receiving buy-ins.

Tau adds that it is important to consider Hack.Jozi as part of a national and leading smart city strategy that does not regard digital access as a luxury but as a social and economic necessity to ensure that people are able to use and maximise the possibilities of the digital space.

“My administration has the privilege of governing a city of 4.5-million people, but it is a burden knowing that more than 50% of them have no regular access to the Internet, which we consider to be the most comprehensive and transformative innovation in human history. Access to it is not yet universal, making it one of the most significant equity issues of our time,” he says.

The City of Johannesburg has invested in projects designed to technologically empower citizens and, doing so, Tau believes, will bridge the digital divide while ensuring service delivery and helping to create a smart city.

The inaugural Hack.Jozi Challenge is a test case for future competitions. The City of Johannesburg has set aside a budget of R5-million for the next challenge, but it hopes to also garner funding from the private sector to cofund particular aspects of the next challenge.