Google Selects 4 Startups For Umbono (South Africa Incubator)

Google has selected 4 startups for its South Africa Incubator-Umbono. Umbono is a startup seed fund, mentor program, and business incubator for African technology companies, founded by Google.

It offers $25k to $50k seed capital, so that your team can focus on developing your idea, free collaborative workspace and bandwidth in Cape Town. The incubator also offers a full curriculum to help with business strategy and planning, and has a deep bench of mentors, including Googlers, VCs, and Angels to allow your startup to tap into business and product development expertise unlike any other.

Google’s vice president of engineering, Nelson Mattos said that the Umbono project is part of Google’s effort to grow its ecosystem in Africa. “We are very excited about the programme, it has been very successful so far. We hope big success stories come out of it with the chosen teams. The four teams that have been chosen show a lot of talent and promise,” says Mattos.

The four selected startups include:

• Starburst Games is a mobile games development startup. The company claims it has “the most addictive mobile games on the market”.
• Localsort is an online concierge service aimed at hotels to help them recommend better locations and activities for their guests. The company hopes to “help businesses connect with each other and create an open and easy to use network and marketplace”.
• TaxTim is a web-based service that helps individuals manage their tax returns. “Tim simplifies your returns in and question and answer format, making filing your returns easier,” says the company.
• SampleBoard is a design-focused website that digitizes the “sampling process for design”. The site enables designers to share visual ideas with clients from the start of a project in order to manage expectations.

Other partners include Ogilvy Cape Town, who will help the team with branding as well as The Hub, Cape Town, who will provide the space for the teams.

Via Memeburn