The overall winner at the MTN Business App of the Year Awards 2015 was courier and fleet management app Wumdrop.
The Cape Town- and Johannesburg-based start-up also scooped the award for the best enterprise app at the fourth annual awards ceremony that took place in Sandton last night.
The awards seek to unearth innovative and customised apps that will create a distinct customer experience. This year, the awards focused on genre-related categories, instead of platform categories.
Wumdrop co-founders Simon Hartley and Roy Borole met at a TV screenwriting course at the University of Cape Town. Neither has a development or computer science background. The idea for Wumdrop came from a previous business, WumWum, which delivered nappies to households.
The idea soon developed into an app that allowed users to pick up or deliver anything, anywhere and anytime in real-time. The company's main business comes from enterprise e-commerce clients; these include Groupon and SAFlorist, among others.
The co-founders used their own money and savings to launch the company mid-last-year. After that ran out, they were able to get funding from a range of investors. Hartley says as of this week, the company has R1 million in funding secured.
The service is available in Cape Town, Pretoria and Johannesburg at the moment and the company plans to launch in Durban next.
Hartley says the company has plans to grow and hire aggressively over the next year in the rest of the country and Africa.
Wumdrop walked away with R200 000 to put towards a media campaign and a R20 000 Dion Wired gift card.
All in a name
The other app of the evening that also scored two awards was the load-shedding app, EskomSePush. The two-man team walked away with the Best Breakthrough Developer App and the People's Choice Award. Co-founders Dan Wells and Herman Maritz both have full-time jobs, and EskomSePush was developed as a side project.
Wells and Maritz say there is humour around the name, but it is not meant to be a dig at Eskom. "It was all about getting your mother to say: 'What did you say?'" says Maritz.
The app, which has 120 000 daily active users and over 250 000 downloads, is currently not being monetised. Wells says that was never the goal but because of the sudden and aggressive growth, they may carefully consider options. "However, we do not want it to interfere with the user experience."
More winners
The other category winners of the evening included DStv Now for the Best Consumer App, Vula Mobile for the Most Innovative App, CPUT Mobile for the Best Enterprise Development App, and M4JAM won the Best Wild Card App.
"We are encouraged by the level of innovation and creativity showcased at the 2015 MTN Business App of the Year Awards." says Alpheus Mangale, MTN Business South Africa CEO. "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.
"The key to this year's challenge was not to simply add another app to the current line-up, but to look for an innovative idea that is set to add value and change the way business is conducted," said Mangale.
Last year, LIVE Inspect, an insurance claim app that allows insurers to automatically assess damage to vehicles, claimed the overall winner's spot. Mobile payments app Zapper won the consumers' choice award and best Microsoft app.
In 2013, mobile payment app SnapScan was the overall winner. The app was later acquired by Standard Bank and is now used extensively countrywide. Other winners that year included the iOS DStv app, the Nedbank app suite and PriceCheck Mobile. PriceCheck went on to win International App of the Year in the US.
In 2012, the first year of the awards, the FNB Banking app was the overall winner, with the Discovery Health ID app receiving the award for the best iOS enterprise app.
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