GrindstoneX has announced the second cohort of 10 female entrepreneurs who will benefit from its growth engineering programme, run in partnership with Naspers Labs.
Disrupt Africa reported in 2022 South Africa’s Grindstone Accelerator had partnered Naspers Labs to launch GrindstoneX, a new all-female accelerator programme designed to make women-led startups more investible, scalable, and exit-ready.
Founded in 2014 and co-owned by Knife Capital and Thinkroom, Grindstone focuses on assisting high-growth, innovation-driven companies to enable scale in their businesses. Naspers Labs, meanwhile, is the youth development programme of global consumer internet group and technology investor, Naspers.
Ten South African startups were selected for the first cohort earlier this year, and a further 10 have now been selected for the second edition. They include Ambani Africa, an educational gaming and streaming platform founded by Mukundi Lambani; Binase Corporation, an educational food, skincare and travel experience founded by Nabo Binase; Featherlinx, founded by Meagan Chauke, an ICT company that specialises in developing systems and applications for the vulnerable; and HYHarvest, an agri-tech company founded by Zandile Khumalo.
Also selected are inJoin, a technology empowerment company founded by Naledi Sithole that provides cutting-edge technology and architecture to enable organisations to be data-informed and future-proof; Makhoba Professional Services a networking and cabling internet services company founded by Thabile Makhoba; and MobileGPT, a WhatsApp application that integrates the advanced capabilities of the GPT-4 engine to provide users with a personal AI assistant on the go, founded by Bertha Kgokong.
The list is completed by RealPPE Marketplace, a one-stop shop for medical practitioners and industrial PPE buyers founded by Lebogang Mashaba; and African Distribution Technologies, founded by Vani Jolly, which leverages website and app technologies to provide a B2B e-commerce platform to meet business owners’ needs in underserved areas and townships.
Grindstone Ventures is at the forefront of gender-lens investing in South Africa to help close the gender funding gap. Qualifying companies in the GrindstoneX accelerator may benefit from future acceleration programmes or investment opportunities through the Grindstone network.
