Nigeria’s Sela Labs and Senegal’s Red Flash Mobile are among the 11 startups from across the world selected for the latest edition of the Oslo-based Katapult Accelerator, earning investment of up to US$150,000 and development support.
The three-month Katapult Accelerator programme aims to fast-track solutions to global problems within both environmental and societal domains, and supports startups that can address these problems with exponential technologies, such as AI, blockchain and IoT.
Its latest programme will see 11 startups work with the accelerator’s core team and a network of more than 120 international mentors to develop their businesses, with two African startups amongst the cohort. They are Senegal’s Red Flash Mobile, which provides municipalities with digitised solutions for local tax and revenue collection, and Nigeria’s Sela Labs, an enterprise tool for de-risking development investment in emerging markets.
Companies from Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and the United Kingdom (UK) have also been accepted into the programme, which will see Katapult Accelerator invest up to US$150,000 in each startup for an equity stake. Each business will for the next three months participate in a tailor-made, hands-on programme that aims to scale their businesses and ensure they are investor-ready.
“Our programme shows that generating financial returns and making a positive impact can go hand in hand. We are looking forward to supporting these amazing founders to scale their businesses and create a measurable impact on a global level,” says Haakon Brunell, managing partner and co-founder of Katapult Accelerator.
This group will be the fourth batch to partake in the accelerator programme since its inception in the fall of 2017, with Red Flash Mobile and Sela Labs taking the number of African participants so far to eight. Kenyan mobile commerce platform Sky.Garden was part of the first cohort in August 2017, Nigeria’s SimbaPay and Kenya’s ConnectMed took part in the March 2018 edition, and Kenyan cloud-based core banking system FinAccess, Egyptian low-immersion virtual reality science labs PraxiLabs, and Tunisia’s Think.iT were part of last August’s cohort.
