Nigeria’s leading innovative Bank, Wema Bank, has shortlisted ten finalists to take part in the Virtual Bootcamp for its Hackaholics (2.0) Accelerator Program slated to start on the 18th of January 2021. The finalists, pooled from over five hundred applications, were revealed during the two-day virtual pitch program last year.
The pitch program began with an opening remark by the Managing Director, Wema Bank, Mr Ademola Adebise. He commended the startups for their efforts and willingness to contribute to the growth of Nigerian society. He said, “We are very proud to create a platform where businesses can have access to diverse resources that can enable them to provide solutions to prevailing everyday challenges. This is born out of our aspiration to create innovative solutions that can help us as a bank, our environment and the country at large. In its second year, we are very excited to have started an initiative focused on creating commercialization opportunities for participating businesses by leveraging top-notch resources needed to give their solutions a competitive edge in the market”.
The first day of the pitch program was an avenue for participating startups to prepare and get to know more about Hackaholics 2.0, the evaluation criteria, an overview of each identified industry, market demands and needs, the importance of tech in these areas, and a session for questions and answers. The second day of the program enabled participants to pitch their solutions to a group of industry experts(panellists) resulting in the shortlisting of ten finalists out of the twenty participants that pitched their solutions.
The ten finalists made up of two businesses across the five identified verticals; Health-tech, Edutech, Fintech, Gaming & Betting and Agritech, would be further engaged and helped to develop and groom their solutions into market-ready products. Among other engagement is an intensive month-long Bootcamp where these startups would undergo various ideation, design and development sessions in collaboration with our partners GreenHouse Capital (GHC) and known industry experts from home and abroad.