The Standard Chartered Women in Tech Cohort 6 Program has opened applications in Kenya with a mission to support female founders and help them grow their businesses.
The Standard Chartered Women in Technology is an initiative of Standard Chartered in partnership with Strathmore University’s @iBizAfrica incubator. It combines world-class startup support with local and international experience to provide Africa’s most competitive and attractive startup incubation program focusing on immersive learning, mentorship, building and growing Africa’s next iconic startups taking on the continent’s most relevant challenges and opportunities with the support of seed capital.
According to the Incubator,they are seeking to recruit the best entrepreneurial minds, women-led tech startups as key drivers of innovation in business.The principle founder must be a woman,above 18 years of age,Of Kenyan nationality or permanent residency.
The Incubator is also targeting Kenyan startups which are building technological solutions aimed at mitigating Kenyan socio-economic challenges.The selected startup ventures should be sector agnostic and embed components of emerging technologies in building their solutions such as Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things; Big Data; Machine Learning; Robotics; Augmented & Virtual Reality; 3D & 4D Printing; Cloud Computing; Big Data; Blockchain; Drone Technology and Biometrics e.t.c within their respective sectors.
The applicants must be Women led startup ventures and the teams should be made up of at least 50% women.
Principal applicant must be the founder with a majority stake and the venture must have 3 months to less than 2 years of operation seeking support for proof of concept, customer, product and business model development.
The startups must be pre-revenue with early traction (users). Post revenue is an added advantage,they should not have received investment of more than KES. 500,000 and not participated in a similar program in the last 1 year.
Selected startups will take part in a 12-week immersive learning experience, gain access to a network of coaching experts, and access B2B networking opportunities. They will also take part in personalised mentorship sessions to address their unique business needs.
The top seven finalists will receive KES1 million (US$7,500) in equity-free grant seed funding, as well as nine months of ongoing support from Standard Chartered and @iBizAfrica to assist with go-to-market and scale.
