Millions invested in businesses
OVER the past 12 weeks, a total of 17 partnerships were struck between five millionaire investors and everyday South Africans who were looking to start, grow or save their businesses.
These deals totalled many millions of rands. In Sunday night’s final episode of Shark Tank SA, the last two deals were cemented in the tank, amid some seriously emotional moments.
Vincent Viviers and Enrico Ferigolli came into the tank with their innovative app called Bottles.
Quite simply, Bottles is a service that delivers alcohol directly to your home in under 60 minutes. All you have to do is select your location, browse the menu, choose your items and check out.
With a succinct and clear pitch, the Bottles team received three offers from Gil Oved, Marnus Broodryk and Vinny Lingham. In the end, it was Oved’s offer that proved the sweetest for them, and they chose to partner with the marketing guru.
The second deal done was an emotional one that had a few of the Sharks in tears, and had all of them reaching into their pockets to assist.
Daniel van der Spuy and his nephew Adriaan van der Spuy came into the tank with a revolutionary medical invention. Daniel was diagnosed with advanced Crohn’s disease a few months after getting married.
After surgery, he now has a colostomy bag attached to him at all times. Daniel quickly realised that the process of cleaning the bag was profoundly demoralising.
And so, with Adriaan’s encouragement, he invented the “Lazarus” device, which effectively and easily cleans out medical bags of this sort.
Visibly moved by Daniel’s struggle and by his fighting spirit, the Sharks all offered to give him the money required to get the patent as soon as possible.
Throughout the rest of the season, all five of the Sharks made some canny investments.
Marketing guru Oved invested in a number of diverse projects, including home décor businesses Native Décor and Creative Doormats as well as partnering with fellow Sharks on other business.
He and tech expert Lingham struck a deal together to invest in a gaming company called Augmentors, and keeping on the tech side of things, Oved partnered with Dawn Nathan-Jones in an online start-up called Plan My Wedding. Lastly, he invested in the Bottles app.
Lingham sank his money into the most start-ups, including Comfy Mommy rocking chairs, the Numberwise numeracy application, an investment that he made with fellow Shark Romeo Kumalo, the Augmentors game with Oved, the FCP Energy solar roof tiles, the vivacious Ice Cream Ninjas franchise and ex- Survivor SA contestant Shona MacDonald’s Thursdays lingerie and swimwear.
Nathan-Jones, who is passionate about female entrepreneurs, invested in Tanya Byrne’s Party Candles business, and Tamburai Chirume’s One Of Each bespoke handbags. She also backed Thabiso Mokomele’s clothing line, TSquared, and partnered with Oved in the Plan My Wedding app.
Accountant Marnus Broodryk stuck to beverages when he invested in the microbrewery called Ja Brew and in a water purification business, Go-Zone Water.
Telecommunications expert Kumalo invested in the Numberwise app with tech expert Lingham. He also nabbed two other deals, namely Taryn Gil’s The Perfect Hair and Project Lazarus.
To find out more about the businesses, go to www.mnet.tv/sharktank or follow the conversation about the show on Twitter @MNetSharkTank with the hashtag #SharkTankSA.