Seati Moloi started Khoi Tech in 2020 as a simple idea with big ambitions: prove that world-class consumer technology could be designed, manufactured, and scaled from Soweto. What began as a Soweto-based venture building smartwatches and wireless earphones has quietly evolved into something far more ambitious. The company is now positioning itself at the intersection of wearable hardware and artificial intelligence-powered healthcare, betting that African innovation can compete on the global stage while solving local healthcare challenges that international tech giants have largely ignored.
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The journey began with the Khoi Afriwatch1, a smartwatch designed to deliver real-time health data to users across Africa. Supported by a R500,000 grant from Telkom’s FutureMakers programme in 2022, the device achieved a remarkable 94% accuracy in health metrics, a baseline that would prove critical for Moloi’s next move. The company expanded its hardware portfolio with the Khoi Afripods1 True Wireless Earphones in November 2024, blending innovative functionality with distinctly African aesthetics. Both products received certification from the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, validating that African consumer electronics could meet international safety standards. What might have seemed like a conventional hardware startup was actually laying groundwork for something deeper.
The real pivot toward AI healthcare became evident through Khoi Tech’s partnership with Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital, one of South Africa’s largest teaching hospitals. The company deployed its smartwatches to monitor approximately 30 lung cancer patients remotely, allowing the hospital to extend care beyond its physical facility walls. Working with Wits University, Khoi Tech built specialist software that transformed raw biometric data into clinical insights. Plans now exist to scale this programme to 150 patients, then ultimately 1,000. This is not a telemedicine app or another digital health dashboard competing in a crowded market. This is infrastructure: wearables generating continuous health signals, proprietary software interpreting them through AI, and hospital systems receiving actionable intelligence in real time.
Moloi’s vision gained validation when Khoi Tech represented South Africa at London Tech Week 2026 for a second consecutive year, showcasing next-generation AI-powered health wearables and advanced analytics tools to global investors and industry leaders. The company announced plans for a 4G-enabled smartwatch and next-generation Afripods alongside forthcoming international content collaborations. It opened its flagship retail store on Africa Day at Telkom Park, transforming from a hardware manufacturer into a consumer brand. The company grew from four software developers to 20 employees, each step reflecting confidence that local innovation could sustain itself.
What distinguishes Khoi Tech’s approach is its refusal to view Africa as simply a market for Silicon Valley innovation. By wedding world-class engineering with African design aesthetics, securing strategic telecom partnerships, and now embedding artificial intelligence into wearable ecosystems, Moloi is building something that does not require Africa to import its technological future. The company competes not by undercutting on price but by demonstrating that premium technology with an African accent is viable, scalable, and commercially superior for African healthcare contexts. Soweto birthed this innovation not despite its constraints but because of them. The scarcity of hospital beds, the geographic dispersal of patients, the fragmentation of healthcare data, the digital divide between urban and rural communities, these are the problems Khoi Tech’s AI wearables are architected to solve. Solutions built for local constraints often outperform generic alternatives imported from elsewhere.
As Khoi Tech continues expanding into public health markets across Africa and pursuing strategic partnerships in Europe and Asia, the company remains focused on the principle Moloi has consistently articulated: world-class innovation can emerge from townships and compete on any global stage. That is not aspiration. That is the story Khoi Tech is now writing in data, silicon, and clinical outcomes.
