Products · § 02← Ebenworks

Two live products.
More in build.

Imali and Chingu are live in production today. Each starts with a population, not a category, so what comes next isn’t fixed: software now, maybe hospitality, agriculture, education or hardware later. The thread is the user, not the category.

Imali · SA-first · Fintech
Fintech · South Africa first · Pre-seed

The WhatsApp business OS, built first for SA’s 1.6 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. Ships rand-only, South Africa first, though the platform handles 21 currencies under the hood, so it’s ready to cross borders when we are.

Free forever plan60-second setupSARS tax prepPOPIA compliantNo app download
Read moreimali.ebstar.co ↗
An informal merchant at her store in South Africa
Industry
Fintech, micro-merchant accounting, credit profile
Population
1.6 million informal businesses across South Africa (56% of 3.0M total MSMEs): spaza shops, kasi kitchens, hawkers, salons, mobile traders. ~1.2–1.3M are reachable on WhatsApp today (smartphone + WhatsApp + Turnover-Tax eligible). Source: FinMark Trust, FinScope MSME SA 2024
Surface
WhatsApp. No app download. Natural-language logging in English, isiZulu, isiXhosa.
Currencies
Ships rand-only, South Africa first. Under the hood the platform already supports 21 currencies (ZAR + USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, KRW, CNY, AUD, CAD, INR, plus 11 African currencies), FX cached daily from the ECB. SADC-ready for when we cross borders, but not a multi-country product today.
Stage
Pre-seed; live pilot since April 2026.Onboarding merchants across 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 · R29 Starter · R99 Premium
Site
imali.ebstar.co
Chingu · Korea · Voice AI · Deployed
An elderly woman in a contemplative portrait
Voice AI · Korea · Pre-seed · Deployed

“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. Backend, dashboard, family app, senior app shipped to production at chingu-ai.ebstar.cosince March 2026.

Korean voice AI~700ms targetOn-device wake wordStored in Korea
Read morechingu-ai.ebstar.co ↗
Industry
Voice AI, eldercare, municipal welfare
Population
~2.3 million Korean seniors living alone (KOSIS, 2025). 32.6% have no daily conversation partner (MOHW 노인실태조사)
Surface
Voice on a phone the senior already owns. Family app (web + iOS/Android). Welfare dashboard. Samsung SmartThings cloud connector integrated.
Stage
Pre-seed, deployed. Production stack live on Oracle Cloud (Korea) since 2026-03-25. 230+ tests passing, internal security hardening complete. Recruiting its first municipal pilot.
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 · PIPA Art 29 audit log
Pricing
₩10,000/resident/mo (municipalities, KONEPS) · ₩12,900/mo (families, first month free)
Site
chingu-ai.ebstar.co
More of what we build

These two are ours. We build for partners too.

Imali and Chingu are the products we own. We also build the platforms our partners run on: a 16-nation tournament platform, a community hub, a record label’s back office. The same team builds all of it.

See what we build →Read the round →