SmartXchange 2017 Stakeholder Breakfast
The SmartXchange 2017 Stakeholder Breakfast took place on 19 April 2017. With a special welcome delivered by the Chairperson of the Board of Directors of SmartXchange, Mrs Precious Lugayeni, the SmartXchange Stakeholder Breakfast Forum saw the attendance of distinguished partners, SMME’s, funders, government officials and founders. Councillor Sipho Kaunda presented a message of support on behalf of the eThekwini Municipality Mayor, Her Worship Councillor Zandile Gumede, which re-enforced that the support given to SmartXchange, by the eThekwini Municipality, is directed at growth and development of small black owned businesses and therefore is encouraging for eThekwini Municipality to witness SmartXchange continuously delivering on this mandate with ICT remaining the back bone of our developing country.
Seda shares the vision of Councillor Kaunda which focuses on encouraging individuals to look at ICT as an opportunity rather than a threat. Mr Ishmael Mmbadi, Seda’s Incubation Manager, complimented this by emphasizing Seda’s commitment to supporting and developing high growth businesses, hence Seda’s distribution of funding aimed at improving ICT infrastructure across Seda supported incubators for quickened production and delivery.

The highlight of the breakfast was when Mr Sibusiso manana, Head of TIA Agriculture, presented the Innovation Seed fund recipients with cash cheques for the support the development of their pilot innovation projects on behalf of TIA CEO, Mr Barlow Manilal. The six seed fund recipients were Sandile Khanyile for the Taxi-Q App project; Nicky Worthmann for the Smart Bee Hive project; Musa Mkhize & Dr Khan for the EZhealthID project; Thabiso Tlaila & Jay Pancham for the Telemedicine Clinical Workstation for rural health facilities project; Scelo Nciki for the Pocket P.A project and Eljerel Naidoo for the Innovate Logistics project. Mr Manana, in his presentation, highlighted how ICT makes our lives simpler and easier to live and positively influences in South Africa becoming a highly competitive country with solid businesses’.

With technology and innovation being the central focus for SmartXchange, Dr Nik Eberl, author of the bestselling book BrandOvation, took the opportunity to launch his book titled Disruptive Innovation at this forum. This book utilises the IziCwe Code as a tool that is aimed at inspiring entrepreneurs to discover, prototype and commercialise their ‘BIG’ ideas. Dr Nik, in his presentation demonstrated how successful companies and entrepreneurs have become masters in disruptive innovation through the combined process of strategic innovation and marketing innovation.

Of equal importance was Mr Jonathan Naidoo’s, CEO of SmartXchange, presentation of the 2016 incubator performance and launch of the SmartXchange Annual Review publication. The stakeholders were impressed to learn that in the year 2016, 66 SmartXchange SMME’s delivered a collective turnover of R230 584 289.00 and created a total of 337 jobs. Incubation excellence is indeed being actioned and delivered towards at the SmartXchange Incubator!

Tel: +27 (0)31 307 1988 | Fax: +27 (0)31 307 1987
E-mail: jonathan@smartxchange.co.za / abegail@smartxchange.co.za