Grindstone, Naspers Labs announce 10 girls to learn from its entrepreneur accelerator programme in SA

Grindstone, in partnership with Naspers Labs have introduced the primary 10 girls entrepreneurs to learn from its entrepreneur accelerator programme, GrindstoneX which was launched in September 2022 with the intention to help women-founded companies to turn into extra investible, scalable, and exit-ready.

The profitable firms are: Africa Past 4IR, Blushproof, Hen Bar, 4 Minute Medication, Seponono Africa, Abaguquli, Thetha Digital, Tsehla Holdings, Wisi-oi Market, and Younger Rebels Advertising. These start-ups are lively in a variety of sectors, together with however not restricted to, hydroponics, branding and net improvement, vogue market, on-line instructional content material in addition to digital empowerment by means of animation, gaming and digital actuality, amongst others.

“We’ve been intentional in our recruitment method in all our Grindstone programmes to make sure we enhance the variety of companies who’re girls based and led. This permits us to supply direct help to enhance entrepreneurial alternatives equally, and to supply additional springboards for funding prepared girls based companies in South Africa,” says Catherine Younger, associate at Grindstone.

GrindstoneX is made doable by funding help from Naspers Labs and builds on the expertise and success of Grindstone’s progress engineering programmes.

Ladies founders will bear detailed assessments and analyses of their firms, adopted by fastidiously structured interventions, as wanted. Interventions embrace enterprise technique; go-to-market planning; funding readiness and networking; and knowledgeable enterprise teaching, together with mentorship and recommendation from Grindstone Alumni firms which have efficiently scaled or exited their companies.

“South Africa has a status for breeding progressive companies, however there may be nonetheless a whole lot of untapped potential amongst girls entrepreneurs,” says Mapule Ncanywa, head of Naspers Labs.

“Given Naspers Labs’ deal with addressing unemployment by means of digital expertise coaching, this initiative is especially thrilling as a result of not solely are we serving to to uncover girls entrepreneurial expertise, however we’re additionally including rocket gas to South Africa’s financial progress and job creation.”

Solely 19.4% of South African companies are run by girls, states the 2021 Mastercard Index of Ladies Entrepreneurs (MIWE). A part of the rationale for this, is the woefully low quantity of funding raised by girls start-ups – solely 4.9% of funds raised in 2022 went to women-led start-ups throughout Africa in keeping with lately launched Briter Bridges Africa Funding Report. The 2022 MIWE report suggests that girls’s development in economies like South Africa’s tends to be hampered by much less supportive entrepreneurial circumstances.

Earlier alumni of Grindstone’s programmes embrace: on-demand grocery supply supplier OneCart, which exited to Massmart; South Africa’s largest pre-owned designer luxurious model Luxity; supply administration platform Loop, whose know-how is behind a few of the hottest order and supply apps in South Africa; and customer administration start-up Wizzpass, which exited to FM:Methods in 2021.

“The South African start-up ecosystem is vibrant, creating progressive and purpose- pushed companies with the potential to make a robust influence throughout South Africa – we actually had our work reduce out for us to pick out the ultimate ten. We had been delighted to be offered with a lot of superb girls candidates who had been nicely positioned to learn from the help GrindstoneX provides,” says GrindstoneX programme director, Nonceba Qabazi.

“These start-ups have one factor in frequent: the ingenuity and drive of their girls founders.”

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