What do a courier-summoning app, an app that lets you earn money for doing small jobs and an app that aims to make loadshedding more bearable have in common? They all won awards at this year’s MTN Business App Awards that took place on Thursday evening at Urban Tree in Johannesburg.
2015 marks the fourth year of MTN’s Business App Awards, in which the cellular provider seeks out and awards outstanding local app developers for creating innovative apps that have positive impacts on the lives of South Africans, with a prize of R200k up for grabs.
Here are the category winners:
Wumdrop, an app that has been described as “Uber for deliveries” won in the Overall App of the Year category. It makes use of “Wumdrop Heroes” – people who sign up to take on delivery jobs – to deliver packages at a per-kilometre cost.
Best Consumer App went to DStv Now, Naspers’ “PVR in your pocket” app that gives DStv subscribers access to a wide range of live and catch-up content on their smartphones and tablets.
Vula Mobile won in the Most Innovative App category, while CPUT Mobile took top honours in the Best Enterprise Development App segment for an app that lets the Cape Peninsula University of Technology deliver classroom announcements, campus maps, vital contact information, event notifications and many other bits of information useful to its students.
Two of our favourite apps also did well: EskomSePush, the app that aims to make loadshedding somewhat more lighthearted with a funny name and helpful schedules walked away with an award in the Best Breakthrough Developer App category, and M4JAM took the award for Best Wild Card App, a well-deserved reward for an app that lets anyone make small amounts of cash for completing small jobs.
“We are encouraged by the level of innovation and creativity that were showcased at the 2015 MTN Business App of the Year Awards,” said Alpheus Mangale, chief enterprise officer for MTN Business South Africa,”We wish to congratulate our overall winner and runner-ups for investing their time and energy to bring solutions to everyday challenges facing the enterprise sector.
“We are also reinvigorated by the active participation of the developers in this competition as it complements our strategic intent of driving sustainable growth and developing new opportunities to ensure the delivery of a bold new digital world.”
Should you be developing your own mobile app that you feel could be the “next big thing” and would like to enter it into next year’s competition for a chance to win R200k, do so here.
