BUSINESS: Celebrating women tech entrepreneurs

Programme fast-tracks five black business owners for success

ENTREPRENEUR Antoinette Prophy started her business with only R200. It’s now a multimillion-rand company that employs more than 100 people.

Prophy, founder of 88 Business Collective, was speaking at the Female Founders Investor Day Pitch at the Rise Cape Town innovation hub in Woodstock yesterday.

The event formed part of the Rise Scalerator Female Founder programme, hosted by Absa Western Cape and Rise Cape, with the aim of fast-tracking five female-owned tech businesses for success.

Prophy related her 2004 entrepreneurial journey and how she started her first business from her mother’s lounge with only R200. “I took R200 and I turned it into millions. I’ve employed over a hundred people over the 14 years that I have been on this entrepreneurial journey. I have impacted over a hundred founders in South Africa, in Kenya and Uganda,” said Prophy.

She said the culmination of her journey was to be able to work with “phenomenal founders”.

Prophy said the aim of the event was to remind the founders of their magic.

“I cannot empower anyone. I am not God, but I can remind them of their magic, I can remind them of their power,” she said.

Prophy said before she started her business she worked for an advertising agency for 12 years.

During the difficulties she was going through at the time, she never anticipated that the experience she gained at the agency would equip her to share a platform with other female founders.

“I can understand what they are going through because of my own journey,” she said.

The programme, which has been running for 12 weeks, has seen the founders attending monthly networking events with tech experts and investors and weekly boot camps to ensure they are pitch-ready.

The programme was open to black women in the technology sector who have developed a “post-minimum viable product”, and who founded their own businesses in industries ranging from security services to e-commerce and infrastructure. The five entrepreneurs are: • Miriam Vallie, founder of Lily Brinjal, an online store sourcing locally produced items by tapping into Cape Town’s pool of creative talent.

• Tarryn Abrahams, founder of Boudoir Box, an online store focused on sourcing locally produced designer lingerie for the plus-size market.

• Mpho Sekwele, founder of SintuOnline, which promotes the African heritage globally by providing a platform for African designers and craftspeople to showcase their products.

• Santina Iya, founder of Rydwith Holdings Security Tech, which has developed a wearable panic button that allows the user to share their location co-ordinates with the police, a private security company and their loved ones.

• Lizzy Mabena, founder of Zedek Fibre Telecomms, a fibre infrastructure provider to homes, businesses and public facilities such as schools and hospitals, as well as hard-to-reach communities.