Month: October 2018

This podcast features two South African startup founders working the trenches of the emerging gig economy. Human geneticist-turned-entrepreneur Aisha Pandor is the Co-founder and CEO of SweepSouth, an on-demand booking platform for home cleaning services. SweepSouth is quite notably the first South African start-up to be accepted into the 500 Startups Accelerator in Silicon Valley. Velani Mboweni is the Co-founder and CEO of the ride-sharing service, LULA. This Global Fellow of the San Francisco-based Kairos Society and alumnus of the South Africa-Washington International Program is currently spearheading a mission to transform the way people commute by leveraging on the shared economy and mobile technology. Aisha and Velani were both born into families with a rich political history and have inherited considerable privilege as a result. Aisha is the daughter of South Africa’s current Minister of Higher Education, Dr Naledi Pandor, and Velani is the nephew of former South African Reserve Bank governor, Tito Mboweni— who was just recently appointed Minister of Finance by President Cyril Ramaphosa. Listen in to learn what motivated these founders to forgo cushy professional paths in favour of becoming entrepreneurs, and to find out what it’s like to launch and run startups servicing two highly politicised industries. Editorial Disclaimer: Airbnb (https://airbnb.com) is the presenting sponsor of this podcast, which is part of an African Tech Roundup (https://africantechroundup.com) miniseries focused on inclusive travel and tourism— recorded at the Africa Travel Summit 2018 (https://africatravelsummit.com). African Tech Roundup retains full editorial control over all published content. Opinions expressed by the host, Andile Masuku, and his guests, do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the presenting sponsor, Airbnb.