At the iHub, we are on a mission to grow the number of socially and economically empowered women entrepreneurs who run women-owned and women-led sustainable businesses working in the tech sector in Kenya. We’ve initially announced this during International Women’s Day this year and opened our call for applications in July.
The iHub Women In Business program has three key objectives:
- To strengthen the capacity of women entrepreneurs to own and lead sustainable businesses working in the tech sector
- To increase the number of women-owned and women-led companies working in the tech sector that can handle big money projects
- To strengthen collaboration between different actors in the tech and innovation sector in order to utilise the learning and perspectives generated by the Women in Business program to make evidence-based and credible contributions to relevant national and global policy discourses.
For the first cohort of the program, we are excited to announce the following seven women to lead startups and we look forward to welcoming them to the iHub community.
Selected Startups are:
- Secvate Solutions: They focus on creating solutions and services that cater to the cybersecurity needs of Small and Medium sized enterprises.
- Sugar Punch Beauty: They help Kenyan women buy genuine products sourced from trusted wholesalers in the UK. & US. They also give a platform to Kenyan natural brands that have skincare products for women who use natural products. They use social media, blogs and their website to educate Kenyan skincare consumers about the benefits of genuine products and about the ingredients popularly found in skincare products.
- Biashara Africa Ltd: They are a Sales Technology platform that provides: Multi-channel sales platform (e-commerce, POS, Social commerce) to grow consumer reach and manage business records. They help companies to use data insights to inform business decisions.
- Giftchain Africa Ltd : Giftpesa provides a seamless platform for people and businesses to gift loved ones and customers using a mobile phone. They enable customers to buy, send and redeem gifts conveniently while enabling corporates to disburse gifts to multiple recipients at zero cost. Merchants receive the gift value realtime via mpesa
- Kladika Company: They are a fashion marketplace for both online and offline consumers through an eCommerce platform and one on one pop up markets.
- The Afrijob Network They provide African Companies access to a network of top talent from around the world through short-term fellowships, remote work programs, and full-time job opportunities. Afrijob seeks to bridge the current technical and soft skills gap in Kenya and across Africa, by matching companies with top talent from globally competitive universities with experience from leading companies across the world.
- Pink Sapphire Technologies: They focus on cybersecurity for individuals and companies.
We will take the startups through a curriculum customised for their individual needs. The startups will also have access to resources to optimise their customer acquisition and retention, marketing(Digital and Traditional Marketing), accounting and financial management, legal compliance, business structuring, and strategy and leadership structure. Finally, we will offer training on the technology required to scale their products.
Additional benefits for the startups include:
- Networking and exposure to expand their business networks
- Marketing and exposure through the different iHub platforms
- 1:1 mentoring with experts, coaches and consultants.
- Access to iHub ecosystem events hosted by program partners
- Provision of Oracle Cloud platform to further develop the solutions
If you would like to offer your time as a mentor, partner with us or get more information about the program, email us on wib@ihub.co.ke
