Denis Opudo
2017 Dark and Lovely x SLA Beauty accelerator came to an end on 6th December 2017. The Demo Day marked the climax of the ten weeks program that saw three startups from three different countries becoming the winners. The winners were Beauty Revolution from Nigeria, Ghana-based Gourmet, and South African based FreshMe. The entrepreneurship development program is meant to support the upcoming entrepreneurs who are developing businesses in the beauty industry.
The program has seen five beauty entrepreneurs working with advisors and mentors like, Brand Director of African Beauty Brands at L’Oreal for Sub-Saharan Africa, Afua Osei, CEO and Co-Founder of She Leads Africa and Nneka Keshi, Digital Director at L’Oreal for Sub-Saharan Africa; Tresor Mpasa-Engwanda.
The program which was hosted at OPEN Sandton in Johannesburg, the five businesses placed their innovative businesses to various industry operators, investors, and media to win prices in form of cash. The main objective of the program is to empower and support young women across Africa. She Leads and Dark & Lovely were on the verge of covering the distance and giving assistance on the beauty industry in Africa.
The quality and commitment of work by various businesses was appealing to various stakeholders. According to Afua Osei who is the Co-Founder of She Leeds Africa, it has been great experiences seeing the entrepreneurs develop for the past ten years. The first award was taken by Violet Amoabeng of Skin Gourmet Ghana-based startup. The startup is the founder of Skin Gourmet, a skincare product made from the wild.
Louisa Kinoshi Beauty Revolution Studio from Nigeria came second. The platform is one of the founders of Beauty Revolution Studio which offers digital beauty services for women. Sherri Rhode, Deveash Jivan and Lendl Rhode of FreshMe came third. South Africa based startup is the co-founders of FreshMe that distributes brands to saloons and bring customers to brands in the online salon markets.
The other two brands that were present at the summit were Mathebe Molise of Beauty on Tapp from South Africa and Aniouvi Gnassounou of Black Beauty Fair from Cote d’Ivoire.She Leads Africa is currently in more than 35 countries with more than 450, 000 young women across five continents.
