South African startup Howzit AI, founded last year by Cape Town-based Andrew Droussiotis, is an artificial intelligence platform similar to ChatGPT but designed specifically around local languages, affordability and everyday South African use cases. It provides a conversational AI assistant that can answer questions, create and improve content, brainstorm ideas, translate information, prepare professional communications, and assist with personal and business tasks. Howzit AI allows users to communicate in all 11 spoken official South African languages. It has developed the Mzansi Update, a personalised daily briefing with local weather, leading South African news and sports updates, and a calendar summary. The platform includes a locally-focused Boost section for tasks like writing social media captions and South Africa-specific tools covering general legal information, SARS and CIPC-related guidance. Howzit AI offers a free version with a limited number of daily questions, while the paid version provides expanded functionality at approximately a quarter of the price of leading international AI subscriptions. Bootstrapped to date, the startup has attracted hundreds of users by word of mouth. Droussiotis said the current priority is building awareness, gathering user feedback and improving the product, and they are beginning a broader media, partnership and user-acquisition campaign.