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Cape Town based cashless payments platform Sticitt has landed a R3-million investment from a new SA venture capital (VC) company, Crucis VC.
Sticitt was founded in 2018 by Mitch Dart, Dennis Wevell and Theo Kitshoff and today has nine employees.
While the startup was previously able to tap funding from a family member and a friend, who is an asset manager, this is the company’s first major external investment.
Kitshoff, a former banker, linked up with Wevell and Dart who worked together in a Pretoria based tech consulting company called Limitless Virtual that Wevell founded. Limitless Virtual no longer exists, after it was spun off into a security application.
Today Sticitt services schools, lifestyle and golf estates, as well as events and is assisting one utility company to get clients to pay for water bills using its cashless payments system.
But it’s in servicing schools — helping parents pay their school fees or help learners to pay for school-related activities such as sports days or extra mural activities — where the service has really taken off.
In 2018 the three signed a deal with D6 Group to offer a cashless payments service on the company’s online communication platform, which allows parents to track activities and progress of learners.
Through the deal with D6 Group, which is a subsidiary of investment holding company Open Learning Holdings, the startup is able to reach almost 2000 schools.
The startup has also teamed up with partners in various other sectors, who already have a captive ecosystem of clients, but lack a payment function to service them.
Sticitt was initially based in Pretoria, but Kitshoff says after his wife was in July last year offered a job transfer to Cape Town, the three founders decided to take the plunge and packed their bags and relocated from Pretoria to Somerset West in Cape Town in November last year.
Now in Cape Town, the startup’s founders have found that they have easier access to tech talent than when they were based in Gauteng.
The founders are also enjoying the city’s relaxed lifestyle, having opted to stay near the startup’s offices and Kitshoff jokes that his two fellow co-founders have swapped their cars for skateboards.
He says he got in touch with Crucis VC’s chief financial officer (CFO) Francois Herbst, through a friend who had at one time stayed in the same student residence in Stellenbosch as Herbst.
VC invests up to R5m
The deal will involve six tranches paid over to Sticitt, with the first tranche having been made that same day.
Crucis VC’s mandate is to invest up to R5-million in companies located in five sectors, namely medtech, fintech, waste management, agro-processing and manufacturing.
The investment company operates as a venture capital company (VCC) under Section 12J of the South African Income Tax Act, which allows investors who make investments in approved VCCs — that then invest in qualifying small companies — a tax deduction.
Herbst said the VCC’s investors include mainly professionals from a number of business sectors.
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