Hardware technology pioneers, Savant Technology Incubator, is Seda’s latest enterprise development partner.
Savant is a specialised and commercially-focused hardware technology incubator founded in 2005 by CEO Nick Allen. The business model, which includes an equity stake in the incubatee enterprise, was designed to achieve the goal of nurturing South African startups in science and technology innovation – focusing on projects with global market appeal, strong intellectual property protection, as well as technology capable of meeting the requirements of the target market.
Savant works with very early stage inventors by offering daily, hands-on advisory on everything from product design engineering, prototype manufacturing, testing, intellectual property packaging, supply chain, certifications, documentation, logistics and retail, as well as financial and customer management. Led by experts with first-hand hardware technology commercialisation and incubation experience, Savant further draws from a supplementary pool of external subject specialists as required to ensure entrepreneurs incubated are fully supported.
Since taking on its first incubation client, Savant has worked with 18 early-stage technology projects. Of these, only one has not progressed from the R&D stage (due to lack of technical progress). The remaining projects are either successful enterprises, selling products on the local and international markets, or companies that are in the commercialisation phase. It is reported that. on average, Savant startups graduate to fully-fledged, commercially viable enterprises in five years.
Aside from Allen’s passion for entrepreneurship, he also focusses on job-creation. Hardware technology, compared to software development, is labour intensive. Contributing to the much-needed economic growth in South Africa, the ‘startup’ hardware renaissance is said to be well on its way to cultivating a new breed of job-creating manufacturing businesses that have a bias towards innovation, continuous improvement and exploring new market opportunities.
