OVER 500 entrepreneurs sent through applications to Old Mutual’s technology hub, Eight2Five Innovation Hub to enter this year’s edition of the highly rewarding Value Creation Challenge.
Old Mutual Zimbabwe through the Eight2Five Innovation Hub brought its flagship incubation program The Value Creation Challenge to Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) held in Bulawayo last month.
Applications for the programme closed last month during the ZITF week.
The Value Creation Challenge initiative targets entrepreneurs, start-ups, and small business proprietors nationwide. The programme aims at capacitating entrepreneurs through business development and coaching, seed funding, and acceleration.
Apart from that, the programme seeks to build a quality community of small business owners while helping them develop business skills through strategic knowledge and skills transfer.
For this year, the focus was on entrepreneurs or start-ups within the creative industry (fashion, digital content creation, music & literature), sustainability and climate change, and emerging technology industries.
In addition, the Value Creation Challenge also looked to identify talented ‘fintech’ with innovative solutions and encouraged participation by female-led startups.
The ZITF Innovators Forum is an event that spotlights innovations by Zimbabwean young people and allows them to network and exchange knowledge with their peers, mentors, and potential investors.
Since its inception in 2018, the Innovators Forum has brought together innovators in different track areas, and through incubation by the event partners, Elevate Trust, some have commercialized into the industry.
ZITF’s Scholastica event is a dedicated education, careers and training expo attracting the region’s leading universities, colleges and professional training institutions. Presentations from various speakers will focus on upskilling participants in various areas including entrepreneurship, robotics, space engineering and personal branding.
Over 1000 participants mostly youths attended the Scholastica event, while over 100 innovators and start-ups participated in the Innovators Forum program.
As a Financial Services Provider, Old Mutual is interested in the youth and informal sector as these are excluded when it comes to financial inclusion and fintech bridges and lessens the financial exclusion gap.
“As a business, our contribution to financial inclusion is to create innovative financial products and support startups through the Eight2Five Innovation Hub programmes.
Eight2Five is an innovation hub that partners with entrepreneurs to achieve a shared vision of solving real-world and business problems through technology. The goal is to provide an enabling environment for innovation and entrepreneurship for our startup and SME community” said Lillian Mbayiwa Old Mutual Group Marketing Public Affairs and Sustainability Executive.
For more information or to follow what is coming up next in the Value Creation Challenge visit eight2fivehub.co.zw or follow eight2five on all social media.
Caption: Young entrepreneurs follow proceedings at the Innovators Forum.