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Business News of Thursday, 13 May 2021

Source: www.thisdaylive.com

Wema Bank unveils hackaholic bootcamp winners

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Wema Bank’s Hackaholics 2.0, an acceleration aimed at helping startups scale and gain entrance into the market, has announced winners of its bootcamp competition, held in Lagos recently.

With the theme: “Connecting Worlds,” the Acceleration Programme was a two-day virtual pitch which ran from October 30 – 31, 2020, for 20 participants across five industry pillars – Fintech, Agritech, Edutech, Gaming, and Healthtech, who qualified from a pool of over 100 entries received.

The bank presented four startups comprising two people each with N2,187,500.00 startup fund. The winners emerged across each industry after a four-week Bootcamp under the supervision of a best-in-class acceleration curriculum delivered by seasoned faculty and tech specialists from GreenHouse Capital, official partners of the event.

The Managing Director/CEO, Wema Bank, Ademola Adebise, congratulated the winners and expressed satisfaction with the quality of competition and the entire process.

“We are happy to see the winners emerge and are positive that you guys will be the unicorns of tech solutions in the next couple of years. For us at Wema Bank, we will continue to support innovations and innovative ideas, support our youths, and support our women to thrive. We believe that is the way to go and significantly grow and support the economy,” Adebise said.

For the Fintech category, Oladayo Awotukunbo of Plumpter, won. It is a Fintech brand that created a marketplace for secure payments to foreign parties and quick banking.

For Gaming/Betting category, Ernest Akinlola and Obayemi Okubajo of My Lotto Hub, won. It is a digital startup pioneering the aggregation of lottery operators and enabling lottery punters to manage all their operations in a single platform.

Aderinola Amole and Olamide Oyinlola of FarmSquare, won in the Agritech category. Their brand focuses on using the e-commerce model to simplify the demand and supply of Agricultural inputs in Nigeria.

Uche Udekwe and Joy Chioma of Natal Cares, won in the Healthtech category, which is a startup with a product that optimises the healthcare value chain to reduce the high mortality rate for pregnant women and children.

Speaking at the event, Chief Financial Officer, Wema Bank, Tunde Mabawonku, reinforced the internal and external growth integration stance of the bank saying.

According to him, “We realized very early that financial service delivery has moved beyond bricks and mortar physical interactions, hence, at Wema Bank we repositioned internally, invested strategically and heavily in technology to drive Digital Optimization of our services.”

Chief Digital Officer, Wema Bank, Segun Adeniyi, emphasised the importance of the bank’s sustainability footprints. “We aim this initiative at deepening the impact of innovation in the ecosystem and create an opportunity to drive that ecosystem. There is a plethora of start-ups and innovators out there who don’t have the right environment to upscale those ideas into commercial value,” Adeniyi said.

All the winning startups expressed gratitude to Wema Bank for the seed fund and commended the bank for the initiative.