Last month, in partnership with the Lateral Frontiers team, we put out a call for early-stage startups to apply for the Mono Startup Pitch. We saw the Mono Startup Pitch as a way to create an opportunity and platform for startups building innovative solutions to showcase their ideas and receive insights from renowned local and global investors in the tech ecosystem.
We received over 50 entries to our call for applications and 6 early-stage startups were selected by an independent third-party evaluation team.
Selected startups for the Mono Startup Pitch, Kenya
The six startups include:
Hisa Inc: a wealth tech super solution for local and global investing and advisory.
GEMA: a solution that makes creating, issuing and managing loyalty tokens through custom-built loyalty programs seamless.
Spark Savannah: a bio-energy startup making it possible to synthesize renewable bio-fuels from waste cooking oils.
EzanaPay: A property tech solution that allows landlords and tenants to manage rent payments and also access rent-financing
Ayanna Africa: A Buy Now Pay Later solution for Logistics services businesses.
MosMos: A save-to-buy Buy Now Pay Later solution that makes purchases flexible for consumers.
Pitch Day
On the 6th of October, in Nairobi, we were joined by investors, innovators and analysts in the tech ecosystem for the pitching round. The six startups pitched to the judging panel made up of Lavanya Anand (Principal, Vested World), Samakab Hashi (Partner, Lateral Frontiers), Bruce Nsereko-Lule (General Partner, Seedstars Africa), and Diana Mongare (Investor, Future Africa). The judges deliberated on the pitches and the Gema team emerged winners.
You can catch all the highlights in this video.
All six startups that pitched at the event received :
1. Coaching and assistance on fundraising and pitching from the Lateral Frontiers team
2. Three (3) months free use of Mono APIs
For emerging winners, the Gema team won $5,000 in prize money courtesy of Mono and one-month free use of a team co-working space courtesy of Workstyle Africa, in addition.
