By Mosa Mojonothoane

MASERU

The well-received Bacha Entrepreneurship Project (BEP) has successfully revived young entrepreneurs who are ready to now realize their dreams.

Katiso Kherehloa, the Founder of Sustainable Tech Intelligence SusTech PTY LTD expressed his zeal to now execute his idea, which he said will enable the entire business sector to improve.

He disclosed to this paper that SusTech’s mission is to Connect, Empower, Transform, Educate Innovators and promote digital citizenship by providing intelligent software solutions that will be consistent in helping enterprises apply technology to solve real-life problems.

“We are forever thankful to Bacha Entrepreneurship Project for this funding that will help our business buy all necessary equipment that will drive us to bring forth even more interesting solutions that will align with our goal to eventually eradicate poverty in Lesotho,” he said.

Kherehloa further revealed his dream for the local tech industry, saying he hopes to empower more businesses and their owners with knowledge about how technology can improve their businesses and therefore help them increase profitability levels.

“We are already releasing posts on social media that tell our followers about how our products can help them become more competitive and work faster while producing more accurate results. Again, we intend to release various platforms that will open up new markets in Lesotho and make it easier for people to learn how to use such. Later this year, we are going to release a Business Social Network that will enable businesses to advertise their products on a single integrated platform. This will make it easy to find services and products online that are offered by Lesotho-based businesses.

The Software Engineer further revealed that SusTech plans to ease online education in Lesotho, through designing an online learning platform that will interlink teachers and students. He said this platform will also offer free courses for Basotho to sharpen their skills and improve competence in various sectors. “This will, for instance, capacitate entrepreneurs with skills such as business management, Bookkeeping, Finance management, and how to thrive in the markets,” Kherehloa noted.

He added: “Our Artificially Intelligent Automated Smart Farming app with a Marketplace (AIASFA-MP) will allow crop farmers of any scale in Lesotho with crop recommendation, plant disease detection, prediction and prevention mechanisms, leaf age detection to determine harvest time for their crops, weather and soil condition prediction and farm management system with monitoring on a mobile phone. The farmers will then have ability to use the application to sell their products after harvest on a marketplace within the app itself, and find the logistics for transporting their merchandise with distance metrics algorithms.”

He urged Basotho Tech entrepreneurs and experts to collaborate on big projects that will not only help Lesotho grow but also create new opportunities that can improve the industry, innovation and infrastructure and eradicate hunger, thereby contributing to the overall economy of the country and thus helping over 50% of Basotho households to climb above the poverty line.

“Some of the challenges Lesotho is experiencing are caused by individualism. We have a tendency to focus solely on our businesses and face our struggles alone. We are already engaging in an open-source project and will welcome anyone in the tech industry to contribute and grow,” SusTech Founder advised.

SusTech PTY LTD develops and offers software products powered by Artificial Intelligence, which enables them (Software products) to make major critical improvements for any business across every industry, these products have the ability to think based on historical data (they feed on data), they support major business decisions and therefore issue decision support to business owners/decision makers based on what they want and the type of product they have.

“For example, Our Financial Management App can help small to medium businesses handle all aspects of accounting and bookkeeping with ease, and with time, it can make projections or predict how your business will perform in a few years to come.  Our ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software, has capacity to help Businesses from various Industries to increase their profit up to 40 % higher.”

Following the announcement of the 10 winners from 25 finalists on Friday, M2 million was shared among local youth businesses to improve and grow their enterprises.

Among the winners were four women and six men coming from all business sectors with four winners all coming from Berea, two from Maseru, two from Leribe and one from Mafeteng and Butha-buthe.

The following businesses won a share of M2 million, each getting between M235, 000 and M160, 000: STKTM Solutions, ATA Trading PTY LTD, SusTech PTY LTD, Mamello Special Needs Centre (PTY) LTD, Masia Investment Group (PTY) LTD, Made in Lesotho Retail Cooperative (MILCO), Therapy Hub (PTY) LTD, Bits Board Interior, Sum Adventures (PTY) LTD and S&M Solutions.  

Bacha Entrepreneurship Project is a joint initiative of the Standard Lesotho Bank, Revenue Services Lesotho (RSL), and Basotho Enterprise Development Corporation.