🚀 How Automation’s Powering this R53bn Industry
Isolating voices? AI translation works well one-on-one, but falls apart in a crowded place with lots of people speaking at once. That’s why a team is working on spatial speech translation using various types of speakers and mics, and an algorithm to translate multiple voices and feed them to you spatially. The code’s also open source for those who want to tinker a bit.
In this Open Letter:
- Smart talk: How AI can double employment in this R53bn SA industry.
- AURA’s big US play, Uber’s bus sharing & ZA’s big sporting winners.
- SA dev salaries, AI startup ideas & must-listen founder podcasts.
- Recognised SA’s hospital-at-home startup? The results are in.
- Lonely building your startup? Join The Open Collab and get support.
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TRENDING NOW
The Automation Powering this R53 billion SA Industry
In today’s Tuesday deep dive, we unpack SA’s R billions-strong BPO employment machine, and showcase a startup helping SA become more competitive…
Call centres are quietly becoming a massive economic opportunity for SA.
In 2024, SA’s Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry generated R53 billion in revenue, nearly triple the value from 2019 (and about half the size of SA’s tourism and agriculture industries).
During the same 5-year period, it doubled employment from 65k to 150k jobs in 2024.
About 100k of those jobs serve international clients, bringing in about R35 billion per year, earning SA the distinction of becoming global BPO advisors Ryan Strategic Advisory’s second most attractive BPO destination in the world.
Today, over 100 international firms, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft and many Fortune 500 companies, run BPO through SA.
Why? Well, SA has a large pool of educated, English-speaking youth who routinely get ~18% higher customer experience ratings than traditional BPO providers in India and the Philippines.
SA itself is investing heavily in this sector, setting itself a goal of increasing employment to 500k by 2030 — one McKinsey analysis suggests it could be closer to 775k new jobs by 2030, if SA plays its cards right.
At which point revenue will grow to $8–$19 billion (R140–R180 bn, eclipsing even agriculture). So, how does SA claim this opportunity?
Speaking the right language
When it comes to BPO excellence, quality and compliance are the cornerstones. And at scale, AI can do a really great job at ensuring everyone sticks to the rules and the quality of services meets expectations.
But that means the AI listening needs to get Koos’s thick Afrikaans accent and catch what he’s saying if he hits up an Afrikaans customer on the other side.
Get it right here, and you might be onto something. SA has 12 official languages (in third place behind Bolivia with 37 languages and India with 22) and there are several countries where this is common.
Enter a local startup tackling this head-on…
The local startup adding quality to your support calls
Botlhale AI is a local startup building the linguistic infrastructure for South Africa’s digital economy. Starting with SA’s own languages and a few African ones, they’ve built a suite of products to help SA call centres understand and measure performance in many languages on the phone, via chat, or through voice-enabled platforms.
Their products include Vela, a multilingual call analytics engine designed specifically for South African call centres. It can detect language shifts mid-call, transcribe noisy, low-resolution audio, and surface insights beyond basic keyword flags (like identifying repeat calls and the reasons behind them).
When we chatted to Botlhale Co-Founder Thapelo Nthite recently, he shared that it’s built for the reality of how South Africans actually speak: switching between languages, speaking informally, and often in less-than-ideal conditions (loud call centres, spotty cell phone reception, etc).
And, of course, the big aim with this is learning the nuances to be able to onboard new languages super fast, definitely branching out into more African languages and maybe even tackling the big international ones – why not if Fortune 500s want SA over India?
Beyond call centres, Botlhale has developed a broader suite of tools under the Bua product line. These include a chatbot builder using a library of prebuilt conversation templates, a multilingual help desk with live chat translation, and APIs for developers to build their own speech-enabled solutions.
Botlhale were recently crowned Innovation City’s Startup of the Year 2025, a well-deserved title, for a potentially game-changing solution.
IN SHORT
Tech headlines to quote at your leisure…
🚨 +273 million AURA. ZA-born on-demand security response platform AURA has landed R273 million in a Series B funding round co-led by the Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund (CAIF) and Partech. The funds will help fuel their expansion into the US, and drive their mission to make access to life-saving services seamless, borderless. Well done, Warren and team.
🚐 Get on the Bus. Uber is launching its own version of a bus system in key US cities this week, including New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Boston, and Baltimore. The “Route Share” option will be available from 6 to 8AM and 4 to 8PM local time, and will cost “up to 50% less than UberX”. Very interesting.
🛒 Cars to Cart. WeBuyCars is shipping more than 15’000 cars a month from its supermarkets and buying pods nationwide. And it’s planning to up that to 23’000 cars monthly by 2028 via its physical infrastructure. In the six months before 31 March, WeBuyCars added 10 new buying pods and 1 supermarket, with 2 facilities with a vehicle capacity of 1’300 each coming by the end of this year in Gauteng & the WC.
🇿🇦 No DNA, just RSA. Africa’s first-ever winner of the World’s Strongest Man title is bringing the title home to SA. Rayno Nel beat multiple former winners and was the first rookie to lift the title since 1997. SA was also crowned U-20 Africa Cup of Nations Winners, beating Morocco 1-0. All this hot off the heels of “The sub-10 king” Akani Simbine breaking Usain Bolt's record of running sub-10 seconds in the 100m for 11 consecutive years last month. Lekka man.
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Startup Ideas You Can Now Build Because of AI. There are a bunch of startup ideas that could never work until now. In this video by Y Combinator, they unpack several startup ideas that are now viable because of AI. Go build one and let us know, we’d love to feature it.
How Much Should You Pay Those Devs? OfferZen, SA’s largest marketplace of software developers, released its annual state of the developer nation report. In it, they unpack the most popular tech stacks, developer salaries, what makes devs stay and much more. Grab it here.
Do You Podcast? Get the best tips and insights from local and international entrepreneurs from this list of 6 Must-Listen Podcasts for SA Entrepreneurs.
BUILDING TOGETHER
Happening over at The Open Collab
22 May 18:00 — In-Person Event, Cape Town: Come meet everyone as we all get together at Innovation City for networking, refreshments and a fireside chat with two SA founders who raised over R1 billion each this year alone — get your tickets (use code OPENLETTER50 for a special reader discount).
23 May 12:000 — Business Value AMA: Using business valuation as a strategic growth tool: The secrets to leveraging growth no one tells you with Graham Stephan from bizval.
30 May 12:000 — Power of Storytelling Masterclass: Marketing, driving sales and attracting investment all boils down to your ability to craft and share stories — Jo Eyre from Voxeon gives SA startups the inside track.
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WHAT YOU SAID
Good medicine…
Last Friday, we gave you three made-up SA startups and one real one, and most people recognised Quro Medical…
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🛏️ Carebnb: Turns local B&Bs into pop-up clinics during flu season. (26%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💉 MediNest: Uses drones to deliver vaccines to rural schools. (15%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 📡 Quro Medical: Offers hospital-at-home care with real-time remote monitoring. (44%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📋 PulseCheckr: AI-powered clipboards for nurses to automate vitals tracking. (15%)
Your 2 cents…
Ah shucks, H, we’re very glad you like it and are still planning on doing big things in the SA tech space 🚀.
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Until next time,
Elvorne, Renier & Jason
