They provided a significant contribution to Eyewitness News (Primedia) silver award for the Publisher Sites (mass appeal) category.

What was even more remarkable was that Swipe, entering the awards for the first time, was the lone winner in the Bookmarks’ Mobile Site category, winning a silver pixel for the Soccer Laduma mobi site - acknowledgement that the agency is making waves in terms of the country’s mobile capability.

Furthermore, Swipe also contributed to the Best Publisher award won by Eyewitness News (Primedia) in the Special Honours category, playing a major role in the development of its mobile portion.

“The EWN mobile site has played a major role in our overall growth over the last year, to the point where our mobile users became our primary user base. It was due to this growth that we were able to achieve a higher market share, taking us from (approximately) 16th place last year in the Effective Measure News category, to fifth place in February 2015,” said Landi Groenewald, product owner of Eyewitness News.

Their bronze award in the Browser-based Software for their WeChatBuilder, an innovative tool that allows brands and agencies to add a range of predefined features to their official WeChat account, further confirmed Swipe’s arrival as a major player in the South African mobile space.

Since launching Swipe in April 2014, co-founders and former Touchlab (Media24) heads Leo Redelinghuys and Deon Heunis have employed a uniquely innovative approach to development that has allowed them to attract the interest of some of South Africa’s industry giants like Primedia Broadcasting, DStv, Media24 and WeChat Africa.

“The Bookmarks Awards gives us confirmation that our development strategy is working and generating results. We take tremendous care in recruiting developers that specifically dislike getting a specification document that they need to adhere to. We give massive responsibility to our engineering team whereby our statistical approach to problem-solving shines through. We are extremely agile and have the ability to adapt very quickly to the ever changing digital landscape.” said Heunis, adding a key to the business’ success was the quality of its engineers.

“These awards mean a lot to the team, but the ultimate success is seeing the actual uptake in the products we build. With South Africa, and indeed the African continent, where mobile is the primary way of accessing the internet, it’s hugely rewarding to be able to create platforms that so many appreciate.” said Redelinghuys.