MTN’s Business App of the Year Award has become, since its inception in 2012, an annual event featuring the best apps that South Africa has to offer the country and, if possible, the world! Muhahahaha!
Okay, so maniacal laughter and a desire for world domination probably isn’t the quality you’re going to want to put on display when offering up your own business-focussed app for consideration in MTN’s annual award. Or awards, rather, as MTN has numerous categories for contestants to duke it out in. MTN are actually looking for new apps from local creators who are “…out-of-the-box thinkers that drive disruption and change.” We know that at least a few of you reading this right now fit the bill and that some of you have apps that you’ve been toiling away on like Tony Stark, in a cave, with a box of scraps.
MTN wants you to leave the cave and, metaphorically, blow up everything in the immediate vicinity. If you just so happen to change the world, or the country, or even the lives of those in your community to you in a positive manner, that’s just gravy.
Here are the categories that MTN are supporting with media exposure, prizes, and publicity. If your business app is functional and you believe you can do great things in one of these sectors, you owe it to yourself to get your entry in.
- Best Enterprise App
- Best Consumer App
- Best Incubated App
- Most Innovative App
- Best Breakthrough Developer
- Best Gaming App (mobile gaming and gamification)
- Best Educational App
- Best ‘Women in STEM’ Developer (in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics)
- Best ‘South African’ App
- Best Agricultural App
- Best Health App
- Best Financial App
Perhaps the biggest question, for those who are not even remotely prestige-minded (those still exist, we’re told), is why you’d want to enter your app into MTN’s Business App of the Year Awards. The answer might surprise you.
Clickbaity come-on aside, the overall winner of this year’s AotY Award will be spending time over in Silicon Valley, a prize valued at over R200,000. What the winner does with that trip is up to them but previous winners have used the outing to network and secure investment in making their enterprise an even bigger deal than it was before MTN gave them some deserved recognition.
Competition is set to be fierce, though. MTN’s content has grown from 50 contestants to over 600 in 2017. Along the way the likes of Wumdrop, Domestly, Zulzi, SnapScan, and Tuta-Me were given a tremendous boost thanks to their participation in a previous Business App of the Year Award outing.
If you want to give your (working) app a similar boost and you think that your concept has what it takes to win, in any of the categories, then hie thee to a web browser and point it at appoftheyear.co.za so that you can get your entry in. You’ll need screenshots, URLs, or quite possibly a download location, as the judges need to use your app before passing judgement. Entries are open until 6 September 2018, with the winners being announced at a full-on awards ceremony in Johannesburg in October this year.
Stay tuned to MTN’s Business App of the Year Twitter account, and to Stuff, for updates as the proceedings unfold.
