Awards, press and the people who backed us
Awards & media
Probably the most useful thing we can tell you about Vendorah is what other people have said about it. Since we started, the platform has been featured by national media, selected for a regional business programme, and invited onto a stage to talk about what we are building — and long before any of that, 34 South African businesses sat with us and helped shape it. Here is all of it, and who said what.
News24
National media feature
Featured on The Odds in Our Favour, exploring how Vendorah helps turn informal businesses into more structured, scalable operations.
George Business Chamber
Business accelerator finalist
Selected for the George Business Chamber’s SME development programme alongside a network of major regional and national partners.
The Ascent Summit
Invited speaker
Invited to present Vendorah’s journey and technology to a curated community of South African founders, entrepreneurs and emerging leaders.
Bundl.
E-commerce & fintech feature
Featured for Vendorah’s approach to redesigning how South African businesses sell online. The accompanying feature reached 130,000+ views.
34 early businesses
Market validation
Developed alongside 34 product and service businesses whose real-world feedback shaped Vendorah's systems and workflows.
News24 · National media feature
Featured by News24
Vendorah was featured by News24 in The Odds in Our Favour, a series highlighting South African people and organisations building solutions with the potential to create meaningful impact. News24 described Vendorah as an emerging South African technology platform helping product and service businesses move from informal operations towards structured, scalable businesses.
The feature explored Vendorah’s origins, its approach to simplifying commerce for SMEs, and the broader goal of building infrastructure that allows smaller businesses to grow. It was not a press release that happened to be republished — it became a dedicated episode of roughly 26 minutes centred on Mia and Vendorah’s story, distributed through News24 and podcast platforms.
“This Shopify-Fiverr-Uber Eats hybrid gives SA businesses the chance to scale.”
Series
The Odds in Our Favour
Published
July 2026
Format
Dedicated ~26-minute episode
George Business Chamber · Business accelerator finalist
Finalist — The Entrepreneur 2026
Vendorah was selected as a finalist in The Entrepreneur 2026, a business accelerator and competition presented by the George Business Chamber in collaboration with organisations including ACSA, Nelson Mandela University, George Herald, Algoa FM, AHI Western Cape and SANParks.
The programme identifies promising SMEs from across George and the wider Garden Route and subjects selected businesses to intensive business modelling, mentorship, strategic planning and evaluation. Vendorah’s selection placed the company among a limited group of businesses chosen to participate in the 2026 programme as it continues developing its technology and commercial model.
The selection process is meaningful because applicants are assessed before being admitted, and finalists ultimately submit business plans and present to a panel of adjudicators. The competition looks specifically at a business’s potential, its participation in the programme, and its ability to articulate a credible growth plan.
Programme
The Entrepreneur 2026
Cohort
20 finalist SMEs
Region
George & the Garden Route
The Ascent Summit · Invited speaker
Invited to present at The Ascent Summit
Vendorah’s founders were invited to present the company at The Ascent Summit, a curated gathering of entrepreneurs, emerging leaders, professionals and innovators focused on strengthening South Africa’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Founded by Olympian and Tour de France cyclist Nicholas Dlamini, the Summit brings together people building ambitious businesses and careers to share ideas, experiences and opportunities — a curated event rather than an open networking evening.
Vendorah’s founders spoke about the company’s journey from concept to live platform, the challenges of building a South African technology startup, and the infrastructure being developed behind the platform.
Founded by
Nicholas Dlamini
Location
Cape Town
Role
Invited speakers — both founders
Bundl. · E-commerce & fintech feature
Featured by Bundl.
Vendorah was featured by Bundl. in its E-Commerce & Fintech coverage under the headline “Meet the woman redesigning how South Africa buys & sells.” The feature profiled Co-Founder Mia Kuhn and the story behind building Vendorah with Co-Founder Nathan De Jager.
It highlighted the platform’s approach to combining e-commerce, services, logistics, business management and protected payments into a single ecosystem for South African entrepreneurs — and focused particularly on reducing the barriers facing smaller businesses: online trust, scams, fragmented tools and the cost of getting started.
The accompanying social-media feature reached approximately 130,000 views, taking the coverage well beyond the publication itself.
“Meet the woman redesigning how South Africa buys & sells.”
Section
E-Commerce & Fintech
Profiled
Co-Founder Mia Kuhn
Reach
~130,000 views
34 early businesses · Market validation
Developed alongside real businesses
Vendorah was not built in isolation. During development we worked alongside 34 early businesses that acted as testers, advisors and early supporters of the platform. Their feedback influenced workflows, features and operating decisions across the system, helping ensure that Vendorah was built around the day-to-day realities of South African product and service businesses rather than assumptions about how they operate.
- Acted as testers, advisors and early supporters through development
- Shaped workflows across inventory, orders, payments and fulfilment
- Surfaced the operational problems that decided what got built first
- Continue to inform the platform as it develops
Infrastructure & industry partners
Independent transaction protection
Vendorah's protected transaction infrastructure is supported by specialist third-party financial technology — TradeSafe — rather than relying solely on internally managed payment controls. This separates the commercial platform from the mechanisms responsible for protecting and releasing transaction funds, and forms part of our broader approach to safer online commerce.
Publicly distributed
Vendorah is published on Google Play and the Apple App Store under BLUECLIPSE (PTY) LTD, and on the web — a live consumer product rather than a prototype or private demo.
See what they were looking at
The platform behind the coverage — storefronts, bookings, orders, accounting, delivery and protected payments, in one system.
Vendorah is developed by BluEclipse Technologies in George, Western Cape.