Savant recently nominated Beonics to take part in the annual Swiss SA Advanced Technology Entrepreneur opportunity. The programme is geared at pitting South Africa’s best technology start-ups against each other before sending them overseas to compete against the Swiss on their home turf.
Beonics is at an advanced stage of their product development, having already successfully completed successive trials at commercial poultry producers. The team has managed to demonstrate significant improvements from the first cycle of use with poultry growers as well as continuous improvement stacked with each successive trial. On the back of this phenomenal, performance, Savant nominated Beonics to partake in the annual Swiss SA Advanced Technology Entrepreneur programme.
Ernst completed the SSAJRP programme in June 2017, having had an opportunity to network one-on-one with international industry operators, pitch to venture capitalists and learn from international entrepreneurs. Ernst has been incorporating his learnings into Beonics’ strategy and looks forward to growing the company with an enhanced perspective.
The programme, formally known as the Swiss South African Joint Research Programme (SSAJRP), is an annual Technology Innovation Agency (TIA) initiative in partnership with the University of Basel, Venturelab and Institut für Jungunternehmen (IFJ). It comprises developmental workshops with Swiss experts who prepare selected entrepreneurs to pitch to an expert panel. Beonics CEO and co-founder Ernst Thompson pitched to this panel and impressed them to the point that he was selected to travel to Switzerland for a similar programme as well as roadshow.