Afrigather Taking a pointy flip westwards from Kloof Avenue onto Darter Highway in Metropolis Bowl, Cape City, one’s eyes are instantly met by an expansive three-storey constructing. From the surface, it seems like an American-style secondary faculty, full with pink brick and an uncommon quantity of home windows. Stepping inside, one is met by 3,700 sq. metres of a various congregation of South Africa’s tech ecosystem stakeholders.
Innovation Metropolis, based in November 2021, at present homes 10 early-stage startups, 17 high-growth-stage startups, 18 scaleups (together with a Swedish unicorn) and 9 enterprise capital companies. Quite a few firms, together with Previous Mutual, Guardrisk PepCo’s fintech division and MTN’s Ayoba group, are stationed there, bringing the entire variety of entities in Innovation Metropolis to round 65. Innovation Metropolis was based by Stephan Ekbergh and Kieno Kammies, a distinguished South African radio persona. Kammies describes the power as extra of a “enterprise enablement hub” than a coworking house.
Cape City is undoubtedly South Africa and the southern Africa area’s tech hub, with founders, traders, tech expertise, corporates, and fans residing there. Nonetheless, town’s intensive tech ecosystem signifies that stakeholders are scattered throughout the coastal metropolis, limiting probabilities of collaborative synergies. Innovation Metropolis’s worth proposition is to carry all these collectively in a single point of interest.
“When planning the power, the analogy was that of Innovation Metropolis performing as an working system which offers interoperability between ecosystem stakeholders who would reside right here,” Kammies informed TechCabal.
MTN’s Ayoba superapp group was one of many first tenants of Innovation Metropolis when the power opened. The Ayoba tremendous app is at present out there in over 22 African markets and has over 35 million customers. “The power to know what’s trending in tech, and who’s constructing thrilling merchandise, will not be simple to entry from anyplace else,” says Sheila Yabo, head of ecosystem improvement at Ayoba. In accordance with Yabo, of their time within the hub, the Ayoba group has been capable of collaborate with numerous startups to run hackathons in addition to occasions to push out Ayoba’s worth proposition.
For startups, Innovation Metropolis offers a breath of contemporary air to the co-working house mannequin which they are saying doesn’t present a lot worth when it comes to cultivating synergies between numerous ecosystem parts. One among these startups is Proply, a proptech startup based by Wesley Roos. Correctly, which has to this point raised an undisclosed pre-seed spherical, makes use of predictive evaluation to offer actual property traders insights into how a residential property may carry out from a brief and long-term rental perspective, permitting them to make knowledgeable selections on the returns their portfolio can garner. After hopping across the completely different co-working areas in Cape City, Proply moved to Innovation Metropolis in November 2023, citing the power’s collaboration-enabling atmosphere as a significant motivating issue. “In my time right here, I’ve met superb mentors and advisors in addition to VCs who helped us map out our fundraising journey,” Roos informed TechCabal.
Even the extra established startups on the facility, a few of which embrace Yellowcard, the crypto trade which has raised $57 million to this point, and Smile ID, the digital id verification startup which raised $20 million final yr, converse extremely of the worth proposition of the Innovation Metropolis ecosystem. Dustin Strydom, director of buyer success at Smile ID, says that the corporate selected a residence at Innovation Metropolis to attach with numerous South African tech stakeholders. To date, they’ve seen a return on funding. “The occasions right here have been important in serving to us join with traders and the administration group additionally made introductions to numerous stakeholders who’re important to our mandate,” mentioned Strydom.
Over the past two years, with the impacts of the funding downturn having been felt within the African ecosystem from Cairo to Cape City, entry to traders has been essential to startups, whether or not for cheques or recommendation on find out how to traverse the troubled waters. At Innovation Metropolis, a few of the 9 VC companies which have residence embrace distinguished pan-African companies like E4E Ventures and Launch Africa Ventures. Zachariah George, managing associate at Launch Africa, informed TechCabal that of their time at Innovation Metropolis, the agency has been capable of capitalise on the hub’s intensive and numerous community of residents to execute its mandate. “By occasions and stakeholders current right here, [Innovation City] is a focus for ecosystem stakeholder conversations which helps our course of considerably when it comes to sourcing deal circulate and assembly fellow traders,” George informed TechCabal.
Cape City’s numerous tech ecosystem signifies that though cross-collaboration is vital in driving innovation, it’s uncommon to search out all stakeholders inside just a few metres of one another. By attempting to unravel this drawback, Innovation Metropolis has catalysed synergies between the completely different stakeholders residing within the facility. Though the dearth of ecosystem stakeholder collaboration is a national and even continent-wide drawback, Innovation Metropolis has no plans to construct extra franchises. “I consider there are individuals each in South Africa and the continent who even have nice fashions which have the right native context and we intention to associate with them as a substitute of attempting to reinvent the wheel,” Kammies mentioned.
Whether or not it was by design or by coincidence, the truth that the Innovation Metropolis constructing has unusually many home windows is probably a becoming metaphor, symbolising the various tech factors of view and views which name the power house.
