Earlier this month Byte Orbit launched Startup Knight, a competition that aims to empower aspiring tech entrepreneurs in South Africa.

The notion behind Startup Knight is not only to provide a once off prize to the winner, but to mentor and support the startup during the incubation phase up until its maturity. The grand prize consists of out of software development to the value of R100 000 sponsored by Byte Orbit. In addition several other established organisations such as Microsoft, Nokia, Bandwidth Barn and 8ta have also come on board with a substantial amount of added extra sponsorship for the winning startup.

Even though there are many startup competitions on the South African landscape, Startup Knight is differentiated through being hosted by a software development – Byte Orbit.

Martin Ras co-founder of Ching Payments says “South Africa is a breeding ground for new innovative tech startups and over the past few years a vast amount of startups have come to life, many of them failed and some prevailed. Evidently successful startups did not only need to be innovative with their tech ideas, but they also needed to be charismatic when approaching partners, shareholders and mentors. Therefore Startup Knight is the perfect platform for an entrepreneur to raise to the challenge and become the next Mxit, Ubuntu Deal or Runway Sale.”

So, if you have an idea that you would like to make a reality, enthusiasm and the will to execute it, Startup Knight may be the perfect platform for you to do so. The main requirement is that the entry must be focused on a software product.

Only a few more days remain to enter into the event so be sure to get your entry in before/on 25 October. Participants can enter online at www.byteorbit.com. Fifteen finalists will be selected out of the pool of entries and will be announced by 26 October. The finalists will be required to pitch to a judging panel at the Byte Orbit Offices in Durbanville, Cape Town on 3 November. The results of the winner will be announced on the evening of 3 November at a venue in Cape Town.

The judging panel will consist of:

Byte Orbit: Amit Ramdath | CEO

Nokia: Anthony Stonefield | Head of Ecosystem

Microsoft: Kethan Parbhoo | Equity Equivalent Lead

8ta: Amith Maharaj | Senior Managing Executive

Bandwidth Blog / OnNet: Charl Norman | Managing Director

Ching Payments: Martin Ras | Managing Director