In a first-of-its-kind event, Nedbank will connect business leaders with visionary start-ups
Nedbank has expanded its US partnership with Plug and Play – the world’s largest innovation platform and described as the ultimate matchmaking machine between start-ups and corporates – to include South Africa for the first time.
Nedbank Private Wealth is proud to participate in this event to be held on the 17th and 18th of September in Johannesburg, where major corporates and business leaders will be connected to 10 visionary entrepreneurs from around the world.
At Nedbank Private Wealth, we understand what it means to use technology to remain relevant
'We continuously invest in innovation and look beyond traditional business methodologies and avenues to meet the changing needs of our clients', states Vince Boulle, Executive Head: Wealth Management at Nedbank Private Wealth. 'Events like The Disruption Agenda are critical to businesses finding new solutions'.
The start-ups represent both African and global start-ups from across industries
‘Some of the best start-ups in the world when it comes to disruption exist right here in South Africa. LifeQ, IoT.nxt and Aerobotics are proudly South African start-ups’, states Stuart van der Veen, Head of Disruption and Innovation at Nedbank CIB. ‘The most important thing for Nedbank is to get pilots and experiments underway and push straight through to commercialisation where possible’. The solutions presented by the 10 selected innovators demonstrate the importance of using technology to future-proof both businesses and human lives, and how critical disruption across every industry is.
Start-ups selected for The Disruption Agenda
- Koniku: Koniku is built on the premise that biology is the most advanced technology on earth. They belief that Bio is Tech™. The company builds living machines with synthetic biology – machines that can design taste and detect fake food, explosives, infectious diseases, cancers and more. Koniky currently grafts custom proteins that act as sensors on living cells and encapsulate them within a silicon chip. The chips will one day power the next generation of cognitive robots (synthetic cognition).
- Sentiance: Sentiance analyses sensory data to understand human behaviour and context so that clients can develop new products and services that turn the Internet of Things (IoT) into the Internet of You. Sentiance context intelligence enables solutions for lifestyle-based insurance, contextual marketing and commerce, smart mobility, connected health, smart home, smart city and connected car.
- LifeQ: LifeQ is a world-leading science and technology company that want people from all walks of life to enjoy optimal health. LifeQ generates, and makes available, valuable personalised health information and solutions that would traditionally be inaccessible or only obtainable through costly and invasive means, and that can be used by individuals, businesses, and clinical providers.
- Wasteless: Wasteless is the world’s first machine-learning solution for grocery stores looking to offer customers dynamic pricing based on a product’s expiration date through real-time tracking. The company takes machine-learning capabilities used for successful e-commerce platforms – such as tracking products at the item level, automating manual processes, and applying dynamic pricing – and brings them to brick and mortar outlets, enabling supermarkets to compete in the digital era.
- Trueface AI: Trueface AI offers computer vision solutions that augment any existing camera feed into intelligent, actionable data capable of identifying persons-of-interest, objects and more. Trueface AI provides facial recognition and spoof detection solutions for clients of all sizes. The company aims to educate businesses on the benefits of computer vision and make it accessible for businesses looking for more unique and secure solutions.
- Aerobotics: Aerobotics provides farmers with pest and disease management systems for tree crop protection using drone and satellite data. Aerobotics’ software, Aeroview, empowers tree crop farmers to identify early stage problems in their orchards. Used in conjunction with the Aerobotics’ Aeroview Scout App on their smartphone, farmers are able to locate problem areas on a tree-by-tree basis.
- What3Words: What3Words is a universal addressing system that provides a precise and incredibly simple way to talk about location, which can enhance customer experience, deliver business efficiency, drive growth, and support social and economic development. They have divided the world into a grid of 3m x 3m squares and assigned each one a unique 3-word address. It was the first system designed for voice and human interaction with machines.
- Dispel: Dispel makes cloaking technology that renders networked infrastructure and endpoints invisible and segmented to combat cyberattacks. Dispel cloaking is a secure overlay network in which applications can be deployed, or around which infrastructure can be concealed. They accomplish this cloaking through network-level Moving Target Defense: an orchestrated mass-virtualisation and encryption technology designed to disrupt attackers’ operations, which stops attacks well ahead of older technologies.
- IoT.nxt: IoT.nxt has developed a framework that makes efficiencies, cost savings and increased revenue from IoT (Internet of Things) a reality for businesses. The IoT.nxt platform allows rapid deployment of an IoT strategy with little disruption to current operations. The major strength of the IoT.nxt framework is that the solution is technology-agnostic. They can help digitise any industry, any system and any process.
- GotBot: GotBot offers automatic response systems that use AI to give customers the information and service they require through conversations on social media platforms – enabling call centre staff to focus on providing a personalised customer experience. The company has developed two distinct systems – a customer experience tool that provides businesses with a platform to learn more about their customers using social media, and a social commerce tool that adds additional revenue streams by harnessing the convenience and power of Facebook Messenger.
About Plug and Play:
Plug and Play is a global innovation platform headquartered in Silicon Valley. They have built accelerator programmes, corporate innovation services, and an in-house VC to make technological advancement progress faster than ever before. Since inception in 2006, the programmes have expanded to include a presence in over 20 locations globally, with 220 official corporate partners giving 6 000 start-ups the necessary resources to succeed in Silicon Valley and beyond.
Plug and Play provides active investments with over 200 leading Silicon Valley VCs, and hosts more than 700 networking events per year. Companies in the Plug and Play community have raised over $7 billion in funding. Successful portfolio exits including Danger, Dropbox, Lending Club, PayPal, SoundHound, and Zoosk.
For more information, visit www.plugandplaytechcenter.com