Meet our Top 50 Thriving Female Founder for 2019 Edition
Aisha R. Pandor is co-founder and CEO of SweepSouth, Africa’s first online end to-end platform for booking, managing and paying for home cleaning services. Aisha is one of few black female tech startup CEOs both in South Africa and internationally, and has led SweepSouth to become one of the fastest-growing startups in the country. Venture-backed, SweepSouth won the SiMODiSA Startup SA pitching prize and later became the first South African startup to be accepted into the prestigious 500 Startups accelerator based in Silicon Valley in San Francisco.
Aisha is a former scientist who completed her PhD in Human Genetics at the University of Cape Town. While writing her PhD thesis, she also completed a Postgraduate Business Administration course at the University of Cape Town, scoring straight A’s, coming first in class in that course and becoming the first student to graduate from the University with two separate qualifications from two different faculties, on the same day. Following her studies, she went on to work as a management consultant at Accenture South Africa. There she advised clients on HR management, digital strategy and supply chain management (managing hundreds of millions of dollars in annual operational expenditure) in the telecommunications and mining industries. During her time at the company, she was ranked among the top two in her peer group in the EMEA region.
SweepSouth also serves as an advocate for financial and digital inclusivity for women at grassroots level, and recently launched a partnership that resulted in free life and disability insurance for women working on the platform, the majority of whom are single mothers and primary breadwinners.
Aisha has acted as a tech startup pitching coach and mentor for SeedStars Africa 2017 and was awarded the Price Check eCommerce Female Entrepreneur of the year award and Black Entrepreneur of the year award for 2016.
Aisha was recognized by the World Economic Forum as one of 2017’s 6 African female breakthrough innovators for her work in creating work opportunities and improving access to technology via SweepSouth. She also serves as a board member for the Cape Innovation and Technology Initiative.