We first put this list together in 2023. All five businesses are still trading, which is worth stating plainly, because the majority of startups on any watchlist are gone within three years.
What follows is what each one does, where it has got to, and the thing about how it was built that is worth borrowing.
Botlhale AI
Botlhale AI builds conversational artificial intelligence that works in African languages. The founding argument was straightforward: a person who speaks Sesotho or isiZulu at home should not have to switch to English to use a digital service, and most systems quietly require exactly that.
The commercial application is customer service. Their natural language processing tools let a company handle enquiries in the language the customer actually uses, at any hour, without adding agents. For businesses serving a mass market, that is a cost line and a service-quality line at the same time.
Worth borrowing: they built for a constraint everyone had accepted as permanent. The gap was visible to anyone who had watched a family member struggle with an English-only menu, and the business exists because someone treated that as a market rather than a fact of life.
Delivery Ka Speed
Godiragetse Mogajane launched Delivery Ka Speed in 2021 after noticing that food delivery services did not operate at his grandmother’s home in Hammanskraal. The reason turned out to be mapping. The major platforms depend on addressing data that is thin or absent in townships and rural areas, so those areas were simply left out of the coverage map.
The workaround was to take orders on WhatsApp and use drivers who already knew the area. Local knowledge substituted for the mapping data the big platforms rely on.
Worth borrowing: the exclusion was infrastructural, not commercial. The demand was there the whole time and the incumbents could not reach it. If you can serve a market that a larger competitor is structurally unable to serve, you have a defensible position rather than a price war. If delivery interests you, our guide on how to start a scooter delivery business covers the economics.
WeSit
WeSit provides on-demand babysitting, with vetted sitters bookable at short notice and no minimum booking period. Founder Nqobile Msibi worked as a babysitter herself and saw that neither side of the arrangement was screened properly, which left parents and sitters exposed.
Vetting is the product. The convenience of booking is what customers notice, but what they are paying for is that someone checked.
Worth borrowing: in a market where trust is the barrier, the thing you sell is verification. That applies well beyond childcare, and it is usually the part competitors skip because it is expensive and invisible.
You and Yours
You and Yours, founded by Cathay Mahloana, makes customised skincare. Customers complete a skin quiz and choose from a range of body butter formulas matched to the result, in a category where personalisation had been priced as a luxury.
Worth borrowing: the quiz does two jobs. It gives the customer a reason to believe the product suits them, and it hands the business structured data about what its market actually wants, which informs what gets made next. A sales mechanism that is also a research mechanism is worth more than either separately.
Foonda
Foonda, founded by Vuyo Pakade, started as a platform matching students to scholarships and bursaries. It has since moved along the same pipeline into talent placement, connecting graduates and students with employers looking for entry-level people. The stated ambition is to help 100 000 young people into work by 2026 and a million by 2030.
Worth borrowing: the move from scholarships to placement is the useful lesson. The business kept the same users and followed them to the next problem they had, which is a product development move rather than a pivot. It sold something new to an audience it had already earned.
Where a young founder can get help
None of these five were built on grant money alone, but the support does exist and is under-used, largely because founders do not know what to ask for.
The National Youth Development Agency runs grant and mentorship programmes aimed specifically at people under 35, and the criteria and process are covered in our guide on NYDA business funding. The Small Enterprise Development Finance Agency, formed when SEFA, SEDA and the Co-operative Banks Development Agency merged, handles both the finance and the business support side, which used to mean two separate applications.
Two practical points about all of it. Applications are refused far more often for incomplete paperwork than for a weak idea, so registration, tax status and financial records need to be current before you start rather than assembled during. And grant money is slow. Anything with a deadline attached should be funded another way, with the grant treated as a bonus if it lands.
The broader set of options, including the development finance institutions and sector-specific programmes, is set out in our guide to government funding.
What the five have in common
Three patterns run through all of them.
They each started from a problem the founder had personally run into, not from a market report. That is why the problem was real.
None of them needed heavy capital to prove the idea. WhatsApp orders, a quiz, a vetting process. The expensive version came after there was evidence, not before.
And each is serving a market that larger competitors had written off as too small, too difficult to reach, or too expensive to serve properly. That is where the room is.
Frequently asked questions
Are all five of these startups still operating?
Yes. All five were verified as trading when this article was updated in September 2026.
What funding is available for a young founder?
Grant and development finance options are set out in our guide to government funding for small businesses. Several are aimed specifically at youth-owned enterprises.
Do I need a technology product to build something like these?
No. Delivery Ka Speed began on WhatsApp. The technology came after the demand was proven, which is the correct order.
How do I know whether my idea is worth pursuing?
Test it cheaply before building anything. Describe it to twenty people in your target market and ask what they would pay. Our guide on how to conduct market research covers the methods.
Where can I read about other young founders?
Our profiles of successful youth entrepreneurs and tech companies worth knowing cover more of them.
The takeaway
None of these five started with a novel technology. They started with a group of people being badly served and a cheap way to test whether that was worth fixing. That is a route available to anyone reading this, and it costs a few conversations rather than a funding round.
This article was updated in September 2026.
