The startups get solid business plan, clear market review, working pilot, skills and teams skills. The subjective criterion is that we need to believe in your business opportunity in order to explain the opportunity to investors. We need to be convinced to such an extent that we would want to invest our last money in your venture.
Saskia Reus-Makkink, Head of Investor Relations and Mentorship Program at VC4Africa, said, “We know that most of the added value of the VC4Africa platform is in screening and preparing entrepreneurs to get them ready for investment.Therefore in our coaching program we do series of interviews,training and VC-startup link “.
In the Booster Program startups get 3 months of about 2 hours per week of online coaching and feedback on their plans and financial projections.The mentors share their best practises to help boost businesses, marketing and finance skills among the startups.
Three startups have signed up already and five more will be selected at the end of March.
The firm also has a peer to peer coaching program which is albeit different from the Booster program.
VC4Africa Booster program was awarded to ‘Very Sol ,a energy solutions startup in Nigeria with modest sales already made in Europe which only expanded to Africa with about 50k EUR personal savings. The startup is looking for for 350K EUR, mainly to be invested in fixed assets.
Penda Health,which is building quality women health centres for middle and low income women across Kenya with an already profitable track record of a few months is looking at EUR 500,000 for its expansion into East Africa while m-KAZI ,a Kenyan online,SMS and mobile mass market job search application banking on the 28 million mobile phone users in Kenya with a need of 50k to speed up their market penetration. The third firm,The African Alternative Energy Solutions in Uganda , which is aiming at providing backup power for African homes is looking for 500k EUR for expand.
Several firms in Africa also offer mentorship to startups with seed capital for take off.
88mph in Kenya has invested several USD in startups and time. It also has a working space of more than 120 startups and has a wide network of serial investors who coach and train startups.
Africa has hubs for grooming this startups into successful businesses. Such hubs include iHub,Mlab,Nailab among others.
What VC4Africa has done is just a show of investor confidence in African startups and the fact that investors are putting in their money and time;there is a great possibility for the continent to have internet millionaires.
