The UCT Genesis project will launch another eight dynamic student start-up businesses at the yearly UCT Genesis Product Launch and Exhibition, on August 10.
This year, the headline sponsor for the event is Snapscan, with Greeff Properties sponsoring the VIP Section.
The event will showcase some of South Africa’s new entrepreneurs, who are learning how to set up and run their own businesses.
Products range from greywater reticulation systems for the township market, to an edtech platform which aims to connect students in need of a mentor to retired C-suite executives, and a pioneer medtech in the form of a prone-motion wheelchair for paraplegics.
It is posited that, every year, top business leaders, angel investors and venture capitalists scout the UCT Genesis Project Expo for new talent.
The Expo will be held on the Mezzanine in the Leslie Social Science building on Upper Campus from 09:00 to 14:00 on August 10. The event will be officially opened by UCT Vice-Chancellor Mamokgethi Phakeng.
The expo is by invitation only but it will be live-streamed on Facebook.
The theme for this year’s class is “Empowering four-million unemployed South African youth to improve their lives in an economically, socially and environmentally sustainable way”, and is noted as particularly relevant in today’s challenging socioeconomic climate.
Hundreds of local and international students apply to join the Honours-level Postgraduate Diploma in Entrepreneurship (PDE) programme, which is run by the Faculty of Commerce at UCT.
With only the top students selected and as part of the action-learning component of the PDE, Genesis students form start-up teams where they identify an important social or environmental problem worth solving, ideate an innovative solution and then take their innovative product or platform to market.
The student start-up teams are required to raise their own start-up capital. This is typically done through a series of fundraising events such as Cake Sale Days on UCT’s Student Plaza. On average, the students raise between R20 000 and R40 000 start-up capital.
As they develop innovative product-based solutions to big problems, Genesis student teams may import key components from overseas, but manufacturing has to happen locally to maximise local job creation. Over the course of one academic year, student teams develop their businesses under the keen supervision of UCT academics. The teams are also mentored by high-profile business leaders.