A student team from the University of Cape Town (UCT) has won a top prize at the Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC), which is held annually at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) in the US.
The UCT team and their project Khusela – a low cost fire detection device for informal housing – was named one of the top five initiatives worldwide and took the GSVC People’s Choice award in the global round – competing against hundreds of entries and winning out against 18 finalists in the last round.
The Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) is the world’s pre-eminent social business plan competition providing aspiring entrepreneurs with mentoring, exposure, and prize money to transform their business ideas into positive real-world impact.
Khusela, which means “protect”, is a low-cost fire detection device and integrated alert service designed for shack-dwellers worldwide. In South Africa, there are on average 10 shack fires a day with someone dying in a shack fire every other day, according to Abahlali baseMjondolo, a South African shack-dwellers’ movement.
“Our proactive early-warning system networks individuals within communities and with the authorities to mitigate the loss of life and property caused by shack fires – a global human tragedy,” says Francois Petousis, co-founder of Khusela, who is currently undertaking a Masters in Inclusive Innovation at the UCT Graduate School of Business (GSB). “There are 1 billion shack/slum-dwellers across the globe that is set to soar to 1.4 billion by 2020.”
Khusela
The Khusela team entered into the international competition through the UCT Student Social Venture Programme (SSVP), which is hosted by Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the UCT GSB Net Impact Chapter, and was created to improve the quality and performance of African universities at global social business plan competitions. The Bertha Centre is the Southern African regional outreach partner for GSVC and hosts the initial round of the competition.
Khusela is based on the honours thesis of Petousis. The team further consists of Samuel Ginsberg, David Gluckman, Emily Vining, Max Basler, and Paul Mesarcik.
“We received excellent feedback from the judges specifically because our numbers were reasonable and justified, we have significant scalability and a strong plan to do so, the social impact scales as the business does, so there is a significant market which we have great opportunity to serve and the value created is significant,” says David Gluckman, Director of Finance & Operations at Khusela.
Gluckman adds that there is lots of scope out there for other aspiring social innovators to get involved.
“Get out and engage with the community that you wish to serve. Get off the computer, stop writing the business plan, put down the pen and paper and get into your market and find out. In social impact work, it is critical to know with as close to 100% certainty that there is truly a need. That’s true for any business, but specifically in the social impact space where resources are scarce and challenges are huge.”
A perfectly timed award, with Cape Town designated World Design Capital 2014 and its slogan of “LIVE DESIGN. TRANSFORM LIFE”
