Denis Opudo
The Nairobi Innovation Week will take place in March 2018. The program takes place in annually. The event will see 100 startups pitching their businesses ideas to investors. The 100 startups will be from Kenya. Nairobi University is the organizer of the event. This round the program is seen as a unique one. This is because of the collaborations with many ecosystem participants and hubs. More than 4,000 delegates will grace the occasion.
Its fourth edition will take place from 5th to 9th March. The theme of the day will be Innovating for a better tomorrow. Amongst the 100 startups to pitch tents during the program, 15 of them will take the best category. The participating startups will get enough exposure. This will give them a chance to practice their pitches and get funding and investors.
There will be two awards to be won; that’s the Innovative and People’s Choice Awards. The awards will be for cash prizes with Innovative Awards worth $10,000, and People’s Choice Awards will be worth $5,000. The accepted businesses to take part in the event will comprise of idea, early and growth stage. The chairperson of the Nairobi Innovation Week planning committee was happy with the event. He said that the event had grown into a reliable platform for the Kenyan startups. The local startups will get a chance that’s rarely given to them in the international events.
The event will bring together serious participants in the regional and international ecosystem. That will happen through the collaboration that is already there. In the previous two editions, the key players were Strathmore University and iBizAfrica. The event has in the past exposed the ability of the Kenyan startups to grow into the international levels. There has also been growth and partnership of the Kenyan startup ecosystem. That has made funding acquisition, and investors support much easier than before.
