Nigeria’s leading innovative Bank, Wema Bank has shortlisted ten finalists to participate in the bootcamp for its 2020 Hackaholics (2.0) Accelerator Program slated for 16th November to 11th December, 2020. The finalists pooled from over five hundred applications were revealed during the two-day pitch program which took place virtually on Friday 30th and Saturday 31st of October 2020.
The pitch program commenced with an opening remark by the Managing Director, Wema Bank, Mr Ademola Adebise, who commended the start-ups for their efforts and willingness to contribute to the growth of the Nigerian society. He said “We are very proud to create a platform where businesses can have access to diverse resources that can enable them provide solutions to prevailing everyday challenges. This is born out of our aspiration to continually create innovative solutions that can help us as a bank as well as 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 start-ups to prepare and get to know more about Hackaholics 2.0, the evaluation criteria, overview of each identified industry, market demands and needs, 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(panelists) resulting to the shortlisting of ten finalists.
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. Amongst other engagement is an intensive one-month bootcamp where these start-ups would undergo various ideation, design and development sessions in collaboration with our partners Green House Capital (GHC) and known industry experts from home and abroad.
