Team of UCT graduates win Google’s Social Impact Challenge

A team of three UCT graduates, who met during their Information Systems studies, has been named as one of the winners of Google’s first Impact Challenge for South Africa, earning them US$250 000 in funding for their career guidance technology.

Two of the Gradesmatch founders: Lebogang Diale and Unathi September

Unathi September, Lebogang Diale and Rudzani Mulaudi met while studying information Systems, and together they graduated in 2011 with honours. They have worked together ever since on Gradesmatch, at first as a voluntary project to provide important career information to learners in rural and township schools, and since 2016 on a full-time basis.

The Gradesmatch app, where learners can enter in the subjects they're taking and marks received and be matched with suitable tertiary institutions and qualifications, is just the start. The team now intends to expand into Africa and become a primary source of career guidance and financial aid.

Already operating out of Gauteng, Gradesmatch is presently training facilitators for a new Cape Town office that is opening in 2019.

“We enable learners to make well-informed career decisions,” says Unathi.

What started as an attempt to give information to learners, turned into a much larger project. It expanded from facilitating applications to exposing learners to different careers fields.

During their honours year, Unathi, Lebogang and Rudzani worked on different projects, but they had a shared interest in assisting learners with their career decisions, and Gradesmatch became an important project that they pursued after graduation.

“The environment in our honours year created for us a working relationship…. You get to understand each other and how you work and the skillsets that you have,” says Unathi.

The team decided that the lack of career guidance was a problem that they wanted to solve, but they couldn’t jump into it straightway. After graduating, Lebogang went on to study further, while Unathi and Rudzani found jobs in investment banking and management consulting respectively, needing to build up some capital. They continued to work together part-time on Gradesmatch on a voluntary service basis. Finally, in 2016 they were able to commit to the project full-time.

“All we cared about was just the learners getting information, but when that became unsustainable, we had to find a way to scale it up, and technology was a natural thing for us to do, because that’s what we studied,” says Unathi.

Gradesmatch is also expanding into Africa; initially into Ghana, Namibia and Nigeria. The team has big plans and with the funding secured from the Google Impact Challenge they plan to reach 25 African countries, while improving the platform’s technology.

The Gradematch app was launched as part of the WCED ‘Apprentice Game Changer’ programme and is mainly targeted at high school learners.

To use the app, learners must register their details and answer questions regarding their personality traits and careers goals. This information is carefully analysed to produce career choices, qualification programs and a list of universities that offer them.

If the learner does not meet the requirements for university entrance, then Gradesmatch finds an alternative such as a diploma or FET qualifications.

The site is available at www.gradesmatch.co.za.