Ventures Platform (VP) hosted their very first Demo Day on Friday, 27th of February, 2017. The six companies who presented in front of investors,were incubated over a period of sixteen weeks as part of Ventures Platform’s early stage Accelerator Program. This accelerator program was fully residential at Ventures Platform’s Abuja campus, Ventures Park.
Tech start-ups in the program were chosen from hundreds of companies who applied to the accelerator program,so as to gain the interest and financial backing of top African investors and entrepreneurs who attended VP’s Demo Day to observe and engage with the start-up founders.
Themed “Taking Flight”, the Demo Day kicked off at 10AM. Following the welcome address from Kola Aina, founder of VP,the start-up founders kicked-off their presentations. The first batch of cohorts from the accelerator program include;
Jalo, an on-demand logistics company that has set out to empower small businesses by offering affordable delivery services, it was founded in April 2016 by Nkiru Amadi-Emina.
PayConnect, the financial technology brain child of Victor Jibro,is an online lending platform that provides quick collateral-free micro loans to people within just twenty-four hours of applying.
Proteach, redefines education in Africa by using technology to determine learning patterns of students to match them with the perfect tutors. The experienced team members behind ProTeach are Obasolape Abiola, Ibrahim Lawal and Abdulrazaq Iwashokun.
Lizzie’s Creations is using technology to teach kids about Africa, its languages and rich culture through fun interactive mobile apps like Teseem – First Words. The duo behind the company are Elizabeth Kperrun and Dams Eremie.
Tomi Ayorinde and Dami Ayorinde head Mobile Forms Africa, a data collection platform that connects mobile agents to organizations who need data, enabling the easy collection and analysis of online and offline data.
WeSabi allows people find skilled, reliable and affordable workers for domestic and commercial work. The team members are Sanni Murtala, Zainab Oyewo, John Ojebode, and Shawn Onalaja.
These six companies under the direction of the Accelerator Program Manager, Fola Olatunji-David, were paired with mentors from the selection team and offered a unique mix of workplace, business support, business strategy and building capacity, short term residency, and seed funding for their innovative ideas.
After the presentations, each start-up welcomed guests and prospective investors at their booths, who had a lot of exciting things to say.
“VP Demo Day was very well organized, kudos to the VP team for providing a great opportunity for start-ups in Nigeria to build exciting products and grow their business” – Rimini Makama (Corporate & Government Affairs at Microsoft).
Other active investors who attended the event includeYemi Keri (Rising Tide Africa), Dotun Suleiman (Chairman, Interswitch & iDEA Nigeria), Frank Nweke II (Former Minister of Information and DG at Nigerian Economic Summit), Abuchi Ezekwugo (JP Morgan Chase), Jay Alaraba (Co-Founder, PAGATech), Jonas Schwarz Lausten, to name a few.
Later that afternoon, a cocktail event was set up at Ventures Park for start-ups, guests and the Ventures Platforms team to mingle and unwind.
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