Companies · § 02 ← Ebenworks

Two live.
More in build.

Each company starts with a population, not a product. Software today. Tomorrow could be hospitality, agriculture, education, hardware. The thread is the user, not the category.

All hero imagery on this site is illustrative. Stock photography licensed from Unsplash, captioned composite use. We swap in an attributed scene the moment a pilot participant opts in to be named.

Fintech · South Africa · Pilot live

The WhatsApp business OS for SA’s 1.7 million informal merchants.

Track income, expenses, invoices, inventory and taxes, all through a WhatsApp message. Built for SA’s 1.6 million informal businesses. Works in English, isiZulu and isiXhosa.

Free forever plan 60-second setup POPIA compliant No app download
Rosebank Sunday Market in Johannesburg, South Africa: a vendor at her store
Fig. 01 · Rosebank Sunday Market, Johannesburg · ph. Vije Vijendranath / Unsplash
Industry
Fintech, micro-merchant accounting, credit profile
Population
1.7 million informal businesses across South Africa (56% of 3.0M total MSMEs): spaza shops, kasi kitchens, hawkers, salons, mobile traders. Source: FinMark Trust, FinScope MSME SA 2024 · cite
Surface
WhatsApp. No app download. Natural-language logging in English, isiZulu, isiXhosa.
Stage
Pilot live. Onboarding early merchants in Gauteng & the Western Cape.
Compliance
POPIA-first. SARS-aligned categories. TLS 1.3 in transit · AES-256 at rest · K-anonymity ≥ 50 merchants on aggregates
Pricing
R0 free forever · R49-R99/mo paid tiers
Site
imali.ebstar.co
An elderly woman captured in a contemplative portrait
Fig. 02 · Elderly portrait · ph. Maud Beauregard / Unsplash · Composite use; not a Chingu user
Voice AI · Korea · Pre-seed

Chingu-ya.” One word is enough.

A Korean-native voice AI checks on seniors every day, and notifies welfare workers and families the moment something changes.

Korean voice AI 700ms response On-device wake word Stored in Korea
Industry
Voice AI, eldercare, municipal welfare
Population
2.13 million Korean seniors living alone (KOSIS). 32.6% have no daily conversation partner (MOHW 노인실태조사) · cite
Surface
Voice on a phone the senior already owns. Family app. Welfare dashboard. Samsung SmartThings.
Stage
Pre-seed. No paid pilots yet. No certification stamps yet. No revenue yet.
Compliance
PIPA Art 23 (biometric voice consent) · AI Basic Act Art 31 (AI identity disclosure) · PIPA Art 21 (90-day auto-delete) · AES-256-GCM
Pricing
₩10,000/resident/mo (municipalities) · ₩12,900/mo (families, first month free)
Site
chingu-ai.ebstar.co
Aerial view of farms and open land on the Wild Coast, South Africa: an open horizon for company 03
Fig. 03 · Wild Coast, South Africa · ph. Joshua Gaunt / Unsplash · Beyond software, if the brief calls for it

Open to company  03. Later.

Imali and Chingu come first. Company 03 is a question for the year after both have paying customers, not a placeholder for now.

When the time comes, the brief is the same: a specific population the world has stopped short of seeing, named in a sentence, on a surface they already use, with a measurable better. AI today; tomorrow could be hospitality, agriculture, education, hardware, healthcare. The thread is the user, not the category.

If you’re sitting on an idea that fits the brief, write to us. We read everything, and we’ll keep good ones in a folder against the year we have the bandwidth to talk seriously.