Venture capital firm Village Capital has partnered with US payment platform PayPal to launch a three-month investment readiness programme Village Capital FinTech Africa, which will see two early-stage African startups walking away with $50 000 in investment funding. Applications to the programme opened last week and will close on 24 November.
Applications are open to early-stage FinTech entrepreneurs from Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda and will close on 24 November. Focus areas include insuretech, pensions and savings, credit scoring, consumer insights and financial literacy.
As part of the programme, three workshops will be conducted by the Village Capital team and fintech experts between March and May next year.
"The first one will be held in Nairobi. We will decide on the locations of the second and third workshops once we see where the cohort comes from," said Village Capital regional manager for Africa Adedana Ashebir.
"The inspiration for this training was the realisation that investors weren't speaking the same language. VIRAL helps entrepreneurs see through an investor's lens. Topics covered include VIRAL self-assessment, product-market fit, scale and planning for investment," said Ashebir.
Over the past five years, Village Capital has run seven programmes and made 13 investments in Sub-Saharan Africa.
