DURBAN - EasyEquities is the overall winner of the ninth annual edition of the MTN Business App of the Year Awards top spots across 15 categories.
EasyEquities, is an app that helps new and existing investors to stay on top of their investment portfolios, with detailed account overviews and personalised reporting.
EasyEquities also placed first in the Best Consumer Solution category.
They walk away with the overall grand prize of an international trip to a tech-related destination valued at R200,000.
We have a winner! @EasyEquities wins Best Overall App at the 2020 #MTNAppAwards. Congratulations to the whole team and please continue to #RecodetheWorld! pic.twitter.com/ZlsEpXgzLG
— MTN Business SA (@MTNBusinessZA) October 29, 2020
“Our congratulations go out to EasyEquities. If 2020 has shown us anything, it’s that we need to keep track of our finances - and even take this a step further - by finding ways to help us build wealth,” said Kholo Magagane, Head of Marketing at MTN SA Business.
He added, “We’re also very excited about the other game-changing apps that took top honours across all of the categories. Our heartfelt congratulations go out to all the developers”.
Winners in each of the categories were:
Best Women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics): Examsta
The first SA learning platform to focus on content-heavy subjects cutting across the South Africa national curriculum and IEB curriculum. It enables learners to progress using gamification.
Best Enterprise Solution: Checkers Sixty60
This online shopping app allows a team of in-store shoppers to simply scan each product displayed on the screen’s device to complete the customer’s order.
Best Incubated Solution: Technishen
An on-demand mobile platform where businesses and households can request support from a variety of technicians, auto mechanics or plumbing services.
Most Innovative Solution: BirdPro
The ultimate app for avid birdwatchers in SA, BirdPro provides users with the most sophisticated identification tool on the market.
Best Health Solution: Lexie Hearing
This app allows customers who have purchased a pair of Bluetooth Lexie hearing aids to customise their unique hearing profiles.
Best Gaming Solution: League of Legends
An augmented reality game where a character appears and casts a spell or attacks another character and solves a puzzle.
Best Agricultural Solution: GreenFingers Mobile
This app replaces ‘pen and paper’ and agroforestry management systems, enabling the digital management and finance of smallholder farmers, in various value chains, at scale.
Best Educational Solution: Xitsonga Dictionary
This solution provides users with thousands of words translated from Xitsonga to English in a fun and intuitive way.
Best Financial Solution: StokFella
StokFella enables stokvels to manage, consolidate, communicate, visualise and analyse their stokvel activity financials and any other related stokvel matters.
Best ‘South African’ App: Bottles
While the Bottles app started out as a service for the delivery of alcoholic beverages, 2020 saw the app evolving to also deliver grocery items. In partnership with Pick n Pay, the app offers same-day and next-day deliveries.
The MTN Business App Academy was introduced this year. It was created to mentor and upskill aspiring talent for futures in ICT. Aspiring developers had the opportunity to participate in a six-week online coding programme. They then went on to participate in a 72-hour hackathon in mid-September.
The winning solutions from the hackathon automatically qualified as finalists in two awards categories, namely the ‘Best Breakthrough Developer’ and the brand new ‘Best Youth App’ category for developers between the ages of 18 and 26.
Matric Live took the top spot in the Best Breakthrough Solution category. A 21-year-old, self-taught developer, Lesego Finger, created the Matric Live app which includes practice materials, study guides, learning resources and access to past papers for all Grade 10 to 12 subjects.
This year the new ‘Best Youth App’ category was also introduced.
The inaugural winning app in the new Best Youth App category was Guardian Health. This solution consists of a patient app, a paramedic app and a management portal.
The Guardian Health App walked away with R50,000 while the first runner-up Phanda Ispani received R30,000 and R20,000 went to the second runner-up, Scan & Go.
Huawei also sponsored its own category with the My Pregnancy Journey app taking the top prize. This app empowers pregnant women with information such as relevant health, exercise and nutrition information.
This year’s People’s Choice Award, as voted for by the public, went to Checkers Sixty60.
“Since its inception, the MTN Business App of the Year Awards has remained a highlight on the annual ICT calendar. It has unleashed apps that are now household names and provide services to millions of South Africans. They have impacted positively on virtually all aspects of life from financial services, to healthcare and education,” concluded Magagane.
BUSINESS REPORT ONLINE