In keeping with its vision to assist young creative minds become next Africa’s billion-dollar entrepreneurs, Growth Africa StartUp, in partnership with Lagos Business School, has graduated the first set of 50 startups under their joint executive training and mentorship programme.
The 50 startups, selected from a pool of over 1,129 applicants, were given a week of intensive training by LBS’s top professors under the sponsorship of Growth Africa Startups.
The startups will spend next three months on the programme’s mentorship phase. At the end of the training sessions on Friday, January 28, 2022, they were allowed to pitch their ideas before a panel of judges
On the panel were Evelyn Oputu, former Managing Director, Bank of Industry; Charles Ivenzo, Chief Operating Officer, LBS; Audrey Joe-Ezigbo, Deputy Director, Falcon Corporations and Samuel Ajiboyede, Chief Executive Officer Growth Africa Startups.
The judges commended the outstanding creative business ideas of the participants and advised on measures to accelerate and attract investors.
Speaking at the event, Ajiboyede said those selected would enter the mentorship phase of the programme, which is expected to last for one year.
He said: “About 1192 businesses applied for this programme and after interviewing about 150, 51 were selected. After three weeks of intensive training, today is their demo day and we have top entrepreneurs, mentors from different sectors here to hear them out and get interested in some of them.”
“The idea is to empower them through mentorship and advisory roles, give them access to market and funding. Through this training, startups can scale up to become job providers and impact society. So, we look out for the impact of the idea, how it can contribute to society and the zeal of the startup.”
Academic Director, Entrepreneurship Innovative Centre, LBS, Henrietta Onwuegbuzie, said the major focus of the programme is to provide impact, which will, in turn, help to scale up a business and bring it to limelight.
One of the beneficiaries of the programme and Chief Executive of Winniecense Fragrance Nigeria, Winniefred Uwujele, said the experience was quite a rare one as she appreciated the organisers of the programme.
