Nairobi’s iHub Selects Five Startups To Join Accelerator Program
Out of 180 applicants, five start-ups have been chosen by iHub to participate in the iFellowship Acceleration program. The iFellowship Accelerator will give the five startups access to mentorship and resources to turn their MVP stage startups into full-fledged businesses with scalable potential.
The Accelerator program is in its second year of operation and runs two cycles – the first already completed and the second set to begin. Cycle one deals specifically with high growth start-ups with reported sales revenues and in their fundraising stage whereas the second cycle deals with start-ups in MVP stage but showing scalable potential.
The application process began in December 2017 with 180 applicants throwing their hats in the ring and this number was whittled down to 30 entrepreneurs who were accepted as incubation fellows. Out of the 30 selected entrepreneurs, only five have impressed enough to join the Accelerator program which will be held in partnership with the World Bank’s Traction Camp. Together, iHub and the World Bank have secured the support of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Kenya’s governments.
The chosen five will join a further 27 start-ups from East Africa. iHub announced the second cohort of 27 start-ups to participate in this year’s Traction Camp in February. The selected start-ups specialize in a wide array of digital products and solutions across Fintech, energy, healthcare, education, agriculture, cyber security and e-commerce sectors. This year’s selection of start-ups is represented heavily by Kenya with the East African country contributing 17 start-ups followed by 5 from Uganda, 2 respectively from Somalia and Tanzania and 1 from Rwanda.
The 5 start-ups that have been selected to join the program are:
Majik Water whose primary focus is creating alternative sources of affordable, clean drinking water for communities that suffer from water scarcity. Their mandate includes harvesting clean drinking water from air in arid and semi-arid areas in Kenya.
FarmIT, a mobile-based platform that specializes in providing small-scale horticultural farmers with agronomic information via SMS in real time. The information will include the crop life stage to help farmers maximize the quality and quantity of horticultural crops produced and link them directly to large-scale consumers with the aim of further maximizing their profits.
M-Shule is one of the first adaptive mobile learning management platforms designed to improve performance for primary students across Kenya and Sub-Saharan Africa. They provide personalized educational tools to primary school students through SMS utilizing artificial intelligence to deliver the SMS learning support in Math and English whilst building students’ concept mastery, exam performance and overall confidence.
Paybobby enables Small and Medium enterprises to automate back-office activities using AI in order to increase profitability and realise dynamic growth.
SaveKubwa allows users to obtain personalised motor insurance quotes in under than 3-minutes from multiple insurance companies, allowing them to compare and access them all under one platform.
