KZN wine lovers can now Ask-jean what is the best buy

KWAZULU-NATAL (KZN) wine lovers will soon be able to use a new app called Ask-jean what the best buy is for them personally.

The winner of the inaugural South Africa Wine Industry Innovation Challenge (Sawic) were Jan Thomas and team from Askjean, with a winning concept of an app which innovatively predicts your wine preferences, using the power of big data with deep learning capabilities.

The idea came to the entrepreneurs when they realised it was so hard to pick a wine to try, especially if it was priced differently to what they normally pay, knowing that price is not always a way to define preference, but an important consideration when budgets are tight.

It took them close to eight months to refine the idea, which was spent on data gathering, hypothesis testing and developing the app with new platforms like flutter which took some time to get used to and slowed them down a little.

The team is currently in the user testing and refinement phase, but winning the Sawic award has given an additional impetus to a welldeveloped marketing plan.

This plan aims to launch the pilot phase in South Africa in the first quarter of 2019 and then take it internationally. It will be available on the IOS and Android platforms.

The second place went to Torsten Babl from Ackerview, with an idea that uses data to save time and money for farmers. There was also a student award that went to Martha Mukama Asiimwe from Vino Tea, with an innovative tea using grape agri-processing waste which produces quality tea.

“The wine industry is ripe for disruption. A report released earlier in 2018 noted that only 14 percent of wine brands in South Africa make enough money from wine sales to sustain their businesses. We have some of the best wine in the world, often taking home global awards.

“We need to improve on the sustainability of wine production and market it more profitably to serve this important industry. To that end, we’re excited to work with these three businesses in particular to help them grow into leading startups that make an impact in the world for our local industry,” said Brandon Paschal, incubation manager at Launchlab.