BriteCap, an innovative new platform for connecting job seekers and employers, took top honours at the first SAP Start-Up@RISE Africa event in Cape Town. SAP Start-up@RISE Africa is an initiative by SAP Africa and Barclays Africa's Rise Cape Town. It forms part of the Global SAP StartUp Focus initiative that began in 2012 and kicked off in South Africa in 2013.

According to Elke Simon-Keller, Innovation lead at SAP Africa, the panel was immensely impressed by the innovation and disruptive potential of the start-ups who participated. Each has the potential to boost the African economy and ultimately help the continent prosper. To date SAP has impacted over 3 750 startups across Africa. Through our collaboration with Barclays Rise, we hope to expand the forum into the rest of Africa and leverage our technology and network to create viable commercial opportunities for South African fintech startups.”

BriteCap provides an employer benefits platform that connects employers with blue collar workers. A platform for low and medium skilled labour to be more discoverable by potential employers with the aim of integrating financial products and services e.g saving, micro-insurance and micro-loans which ultimately helps build financial resilience for low income communities in Africa. “Our vision is to break down the barriers to employment within the lower skilled labour market and help employers to find and retain financially healthy employees, increasing productivity and decreasing employee churn within this market sector”.

Other participating startups includes Beta Wealth; Fomo Travel; Aliens Moonshot; Revel8 and Zazu. The six startups were invited to pitch their business ideas to a panel of experts and potential business connections led by Nicole Anderson, a global expert in financial technology. The companies were invited to a comprehensive training session focused on how to develop prototypes using the SAP HANA Cloud technology on 21 October.

The qualifying startup was awarded an Apple Macbook Pro and will also receive a complimentary three-month membership to Rise Cape Town, a gathering space renowned for its innovative approach to hosting Africa’s brightest minds in the financial services technology industry.

Warren Squires of Rise Cape Town, emphasised the importance of these kinds of collaborations with other corporates, "as a mechanism to build and support the fintech ecosystem and showcase innovation across Africa."

Rise, created by Barclays, brings together the world’s brightest startups and experts to create the future of financial services. As an organisation with a history in technological firsts, Barclays notes how excited it is by the opportunities presented by the transformations currently taking place in finance, technology and business. Where product innovations and industry developments were once born of corporations and institutions, many are now being created by entrepreneurial individuals around the world who are working with increased speed to disrupt the business models of the past. In order to work with these entrepreneurs in a mutually beneficial way, Barclays established Rise.

By combining the agility and disruption of startups with the expertise and scale of Barclays, Rise achieves a unique synthesis of speed and security, youth and wisdom, ideas and knowledge. With a global network of talent, world-class innovation programmes and workspaces in seven fintech ecosystems, Rise is an exclusive community where the brightest and best can develop, collaborate, and scale together.

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