Innovus Newsletter 46th Edition

Innovus Newsletter 46th Edition

SU’s Welgevallen Cellar receives five silver medals in Veritas awards

Despite a challenging year for the country’s wine industry, Stellenbosch University’s Welgevallen wine cellar received silver Veritas awards for all five the wines entered in this year’s competition. The five wines are: 2019 Die Laan Sauvignon Blanc, 2018 Merlot, 2018 Merlot Reserve, 2018 Malbec and 2018 Maties 2018 blend.   “The past year was a tremendous challenging one for us,” says winemaker Riaan Wassung, who had to start work in the early hours of the morning during lockdown to miss the roadblocks before he could get permits. They were still busy with harvesting and fermentations when lockdown was announced in March this year.   “We...
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Stellenbosch University IdeaSmash Winner for 2020 announced

Keaton Harris, a Stellenbosch University medical student at the Tygerberg campus is the 2020 winner of SU LaunchLab IdeaSmash competition in the existing business: technology category. His business, InforMed, is an offline mobile healthcare translation tool that focuses on breaking language barriers between healthcare professionals and patients. It uses an adaptive approach that is geared towards obtaining translations from healthcare professionals that not only have a medical degree, but can also show fluency in both English and another language.   In July 2020, the Entrepreneurship Development in Higher Education (EDHE) held its first 2020 segment of the annual intervarsity competition. The competition is...
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Lockdown 2020: GeoSUN’s best year ever

For many people 2020 was a challenging year. Businesses closed down, people were retrenched, and South Africa’s economy took a turn for the worst. However, it was not doom and gloom for everyone, ask GeoSUN Africa; this company just had their best year ever in which they managed to grow their business substantially and employed more staff. Launched in 2012, GeoSUN is spin-off company of Innovus and the Centre for Renewable and Sustainable Energy Studies at the University of Stellenbosch, when Prof Wicus van Niekerk was still head of the centre.  The company offers a variety of specialised services and product relating...
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Innovus celebrating brilliant minds at Innovation Awards 2020

It might have been an unusual year, but Innovus had still a lot to celebrate on their annual prestigious Innovation Awards.  The event celebrates the successes of SU researchers, their innovation and successful commercialisation, as well as the sustainability and independence of SU’s group of companies. Anita Nel, Chief Director of Innovus, said they hosted the event in collaboration with the patent attorney firm Von Seidels. “We held the event in one of the spacious venues of Lanzerac wine farm, keeping our social distancing, raising a glass of champagne to thank and congratulate technology transfer efforts among our brilliant minds.” Three faculty awards were...
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Geosmart is spreading its wings as an affordable geospatial solution

Incubated by Innovus, Stellenbosch University's technology transfer office, Geosmart's advance space and geospatial application technology products and services now provide solutions for renewable energy projects, hydrodynamic modelling, telecom and electric infrastuctures, wastewater management, winegrowers, ecological modulating and fog-harvesting, to name but a few. It is also one of the cornerstones in enabling communication between small farms and communities in rural areas. Geosmart is the brainchild of geographer and computer scientist Prof Adriaan van Niekerk, Director: Stellenbosch University Centre for Geographical Analysis. It makes use of advance space and geospatial technologies, such as earth observation and machine learning, to model future scenarios and...
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Five new spinouts in lockdown for University of Stellenbosch Enterprises

During 2020, and despite the lockdown period, Stellenbosch University’s (SU) technology transfer team, Innovus, established and welcomed five new spinout companies.  The team also raised a total investment of R26 million for Stellenbosch University projects and spinout companies during the lockdown period with all staff members operating from their virtial offices. The creation of these companies demonstrate the social impact of a reseach intensive university such as SU. When scientific breakthroughs become commercially available their beneficial impact on society is amplified dramatically. The five new companies are BioCODE, Phagoflux, Susento, Biotikum, and Immobazyme. Anita Nel, Chief Director: Innovation and Business Development of...
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Countdown 2020 Cohort World-Shaping Companies

This is an incredibly important question that marks the starting point of the entrepreneurial journey. Read More

A new narrative around African entrepreneurism

“We need more African unicorns. We need thousands of African entrepreneurs. We need another Silicon Valley in Africa.” Have you ever heard these statements? I hear them all the time – and I wholeheartedly disagree with them.” Read More