Tender Corruption – Another Young South African Leads The Way

Lars Gumede is the founder of Axel Technologies, a Swedish-South African artificial intelligence (AI) startup building NowNow, a platform described as the “Ultimate AI Assistant for Business Owners”.

One of NowNow’s key features is called Tender Finder, which aims to automate the processes of finding and applying for tenders in South Africa, while also helping address tender corruption.

MyBroadband spoke to the 24-year-old Gumede about NowNow and Tender Finder to learn more about how the tool works.

Gumede said Tender Finder aims to ensure tenders don’t go under the radar in South Africa. “With the tender system, there are all sorts of issues,” Gumede said.

He explained that one of the major issues was insufficient notice on tender releases, aimed at helping one insider secure the contract.

“If we can just get people who are honestly participating to see as much as possible, then hopefully more people will bid, and the system becomes more competitive,” he said.

Gumede added that this would help avoid situations where there is just one party that submits an overpriced bid. “We can hopefully deal with tender corruption in that way,” he said.

Gumede was born in Halmstad, a university and industrial city on Sweden’s southwestern coast, before his family moved to the UK and then South Africa.

He first attended primary school at The Ridge in Westcliff, Johannesburg, before enrolling at St John’s College for his high school years.

Despite making a name for himself in the artificial intelligence (AI) space, Gumede said his subject choice did not really align with his current career path.

“I did the basic stuff in high school: Mathematics, AP English, Science, Geography, French, isiZulu, etc. So nothing really related to AI,” he said.

“At university, I did Actuarial Science. I did well in maths in matric, and I wanted a challenge, and that was the hardest degree I could do with maths, statistics, and those kinds of things, so I did it.”

A self-taught programmer

Before beginning his first year at varsity, Gumede taught himself programming and worked on various projects to develop his skills.

He also enrolled in additional Computer Science courses while at the University of Cape Town, which he said were some of his favourite courses.

He added that, as part of his actuarial science course, he had to take an introductory programming course during his first year.

“It was kind of useless for me since I’d spent the holiday before that just learning programming on my own,” Gumede said.

“But it was interesting enough that I decided to just add some computer science courses alongside my degree, and that was probably the most enjoyable.”

Gumede graduated with a Bachelor of Business Science in Actuarial Science from the University of Cape Town in 2024.

During this time, he completed two short internships with Ninety One. The first was a three-week internship focused on data analysis of emerging-market bond indices using Python.

The second programme was a winter-vacation internship for emerging investment talent. The five-day programme gave Gumede insight into the workings of an asset manager.

He completed both programmes in 2022, while, at the same time, serving as the project manager of the Investor Series Portfolio at the University of Cape Town’s Investment Society.

After completing his studies at the University of Cape Town in 2024, Gumede launched Axel Technologies in January 2025.

Axel Technologies is the parent company of NowNow. In addition to its Tender Finder feature, NowNow acts as an AI assistant for South African businesses to automate various processes.

Its key tools include a receipt manager, an invoice creator, a load-shedding tracker, email summaries, and a compliance centre.

NowNow is also working on various new features, including automated South African Revenue Service filing, cybersecurity monitoring, and an AI-powered social media manager.

South Africa’s tenders are a mess

Focusing on its Tender Finder feature, Gumede said trying to find tenders and bid on tenders in South Africa was an awful experience.

“If you’re trying to find tenders now, you use the government’s eTenders website, or you monitor individual sites for tenders that aren’t on the eTenders website,” he said.

“It’s an awful experience. There are thousands of new tenders being published every week. The website isn’t great. There isn’t a great way of finding tenders.”

He explained that a major problem today is that many tenders go under the radar, meaning many legitimate and honest bidders miss out.

“If you’re trying to do it the honest way, then you’re going to be on the website all day, every day, or you have to sign up to tender alert sites,” Gumede said.

“The format is so bad. It’s people putting the information into these systems from all over the government. Head Titles missing, incorrect information, things described in the wrong way,” Gumede said.

NowNow’s Tender Finder will sift through piles of tender invitations using AI and provide all the information needed to apply for these tenders.

For example, a civil engineering business specialising in roadworks could find tenders for building roads and related infrastructure with a quick search.

Gumede said the plan was to expand NowNow’s capabilities so it could find and fill in all the forms for tender bids on behalf of companies.

Written by Myles Illidge

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Link to NowNow.