Renowned African Incubator MEST Celebrates 10 Years With $700,000 Investment

MEST MD Aaron FuMeltwater

To celebrate its 10th anniversary of investing in African tech startups, the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) has announced seven companies who will receive $700,000 in funding.

MEST was one of the earliest tech incubators in Africa, having started an entrepreneurial school in Accra, Ghana, in 2008. MEST is part of Meltwater, the global social media monitoring firm that was itself a notable startup. Founder and CEO Jorn Lyseggen started it with $15,000 in Norway in 2001; and it’s now believed to be a $300-million a year business.

Last year MEST hired the respected Aaron Fu as its managing director and opened incubators in Cape Town and Lagos.

Its 2018 cohort – 17 startups from Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Cote d’Ivoire and Zimbabwe – have recently graduated from its year-long training program and the seven startups will each receive $100,000 from MEST.

"It’s been an exhilarating ride scaling MEST in Africa and this year has absolutely reaffirmed my conviction that MEST is truly unique in Africa in both approach and perspective," MEST Managing Director Aaron Fu told me. "Our primary pathway to both our incubators and our seed fund uniquely begins pre-idea and pre-team, we equip our Entrepreneurs-In-Training (EITs) with a baseline of skills and industry exposure both most importantly with a cohort of 59 other handpicked individuals driven to create Pan-African, if not global, technology businesses. We also de-risk a year of learning and testing with a full scholarship and rigorous, practical curriculum."

The startups range from a fintech platforms for small business, an on-demand storage marketplace, a cargo booking platform and a technical recruitment service for programmers.

"This year certainly saw a trend towards solutions that use a range of sophisticated technologies from IoT to AI to facial recognition to solve problems businesses large and small, from a sole banana stall to a multinational bank, are facing in Africa," said Fu. "I’m really excited at the multiple applications of the technology that this cohort of startups is building."

The seven startups, as described by Fu, are:

  • ShareHouse, kicking off in Kenya, is on a path towards being the Airbnb for warehouses. Their founders are driven by a mission to democratize and bring efficiency to warehouses that have been out of reasonable reach for many SMEs.
  • Nvoicia, which is launching almost simultaneously in Lagos and Accra, will use machine learning to unlock liquidity for SMEs via accessible and consistently assessed invoice discounting.
  • Truckr has a founding team obsessed with ground logistics. They’ve spent the last few months in cross-country trucks, parked trucks, with trucking unions, in the ports, an din warehouses. Now armed with these insights are bringing efficiencies to an industry with so much spare capacity in Africa, utilising robust and affordable software and hardware tailored for the land freight ecosystem in Africa.
  • Jumeni from Ghana is starting with waste management as a cornerstone sector, but has already seen incredibly interest from all forms of businesses requiring remote workforce management.
  • Judy in Nigeria is using AI to empower lawyers in Africa. It’s just weeks into launch has already secured a customer in one of the continent’s largest law firms. But beyond Africa, I’m thrilled at how there is strong applicability for their solution through all common law jurisdictions globally.
  • CodeIn solves a problem everyone in the tech industry in Africa is keenly aware of: efficiently and consistently testing and hiring software developers, by providing an end-to-end testing and hiring platform, CodeIn hopes to unlock work opportunities for freelance software developers in Africa and the world.
  • Bace brings cutting edge facial recognition technology to bear on the problem of identity and KYC in Africa, beginning with financial institutions that have some of the strictest KYC requirements of any industry, the founding team hopes to scale this provide identity verification universally on the continent.

Fu said MEST brings in some of the world’s leading investors in technology, including Aaron Gershenberg, founder of Silicon Valley Bank’s fund of funds and direct funds; Arjun Gupta, founder of TeleSoft Partners, a $600m+ VC firm; and Anders Lier, chairman of Nordic Impact and a co-founder of Norway’s Katapult Accelerator. "Their insights into global trends and the global applicability of our startups are as well critical data points as we approach our investment decisions," he said.

Fu has a long history of working with startups in Africa and organisations that support them. "In my previous organisations I’ve focused almost exclusively on programs that accelerate the ability of startups and corporates to leverage each other’s’ comparative strengths. I think MEST is a great feeder into these; and indeed many of our alumni have gone on to really benefit from programs like Techstars’ Barclays and Startupbootcamp in Cape Town.

"Because as investors we also hear first-hand what worked well from a founders perspective in these programs, MEST has also begun to take a more active role working with corporate accelerators like Itanna by the Honeywell group in Nigeria to bring our 10 years of experience to ensure these programs create genuine collective value for both startups and corporates."

Fu’s background has primarily been in financial services in Europe and Asia and he began working with fintech startups while at a multinational bank. He launched the Africa office for Nest, a Hong Kong-based VC and Accelerator, where he led investments and innovation programs with Barclays, Visa and the World Bank. He also launched Mettā in Nairobi, a global members club for founders, investors and corporate leaders.

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MEST MD Aaron FuMeltwater

To celebrate its 10th anniversary of investing in African tech startups, the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) has announced seven companies who will receive $700,000 in funding.

MEST was one of the earliest tech incubators in Africa, having started an entrepreneurial school in Accra, Ghana, in 2008. MEST is part of Meltwater, the global social media monitoring firm that was itself a notable startup. Founder and CEO Jorn Lyseggen started it with $15,000 in Norway in 2001; and it’s now believed to be a $300-million a year business.

Last year MEST hired the respected Aaron Fu as its managing director and opened incubators in Cape Town and Lagos.

Its 2018 cohort – 17 startups from Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Cote d’Ivoire and Zimbabwe – have recently graduated from its year-long training program and the seven startups will each receive $100,000 from MEST.

“It’s been an exhilarating ride scaling MEST in Africa and this year has absolutely reaffirmed my conviction that MEST is truly unique in Africa in both approach and perspective,” MEST Managing Director Aaron Fu told me. “Our primary pathway to both our incubators and our seed fund uniquely begins pre-idea and pre-team, we equip our Entrepreneurs-In-Training (EITs) with a baseline of skills and industry exposure both most importantly with a cohort of 59 other handpicked individuals driven to create Pan-African, if not global, technology businesses. We also de-risk a year of learning and testing with a full scholarship and rigorous, practical curriculum.”

The startups range from a fintech platforms for small business, an on-demand storage marketplace, a cargo booking platform and a technical recruitment service for programmers.

“This year certainly saw a trend towards solutions that use a range of sophisticated technologies from IoT to AI to facial recognition to solve problems businesses large and small, from a sole banana stall to a multinational bank, are facing in Africa,” said Fu. “I’m really excited at the multiple applications of the technology that this cohort of startups is building.”

The seven startups, as described by Fu, are:

  • ShareHouse, kicking off in Kenya, is on a path towards being the Airbnb for warehouses. Their founders are driven by a mission to democratize and bring efficiency to warehouses that have been out of reasonable reach for many SMEs.
  • Nvoicia, which is launching almost simultaneously in Lagos and Accra, will use machine learning to unlock liquidity for SMEs via accessible and consistently assessed invoice discounting.
  • Truckr has a founding team obsessed with ground logistics. They’ve spent the last few months in cross-country trucks, parked trucks, with trucking unions, in the ports, an din warehouses. Now armed with these insights are bringing efficiencies to an industry with so much spare capacity in Africa, utilising robust and affordable software and hardware tailored for the land freight ecosystem in Africa.
  • Jumeni from Ghana is starting with waste management as a cornerstone sector, but has already seen incredibly interest from all forms of businesses requiring remote workforce management.
  • Judy in Nigeria is using AI to empower lawyers in Africa. It’s just weeks into launch has already secured a customer in one of the continent’s largest law firms. But beyond Africa, I’m thrilled at how there is strong applicability for their solution through all common law jurisdictions globally.
  • CodeIn solves a problem everyone in the tech industry in Africa is keenly aware of: efficiently and consistently testing and hiring software developers, by providing an end-to-end testing and hiring platform, CodeIn hopes to unlock work opportunities for freelance software developers in Africa and the world.
  • Bace brings cutting edge facial recognition technology to bear on the problem of identity and KYC in Africa, beginning with financial institutions that have some of the strictest KYC requirements of any industry, the founding team hopes to scale this provide identity verification universally on the continent.

Fu said MEST brings in some of the world’s leading investors in technology, including Aaron Gershenberg, founder of Silicon Valley Bank’s fund of funds and direct funds; Arjun Gupta, founder of TeleSoft Partners, a $600m+ VC firm; and Anders Lier, chairman of Nordic Impact and a co-founder of Norway’s Katapult Accelerator. “Their insights into global trends and the global applicability of our startups are as well critical data points as we approach our investment decisions,” he said.

Fu has a long history of working with startups in Africa and organisations that support them. “In my previous organisations I’ve focused almost exclusively on programs that accelerate the ability of startups and corporates to leverage each other’s’ comparative strengths. I think MEST is a great feeder into these; and indeed many of our alumni have gone on to really benefit from programs like Techstars’ Barclays and Startupbootcamp in Cape Town.

“Because as investors we also hear first-hand what worked well from a founders perspective in these programs, MEST has also begun to take a more active role working with corporate accelerators like Itanna by the Honeywell group in Nigeria to bring our 10 years of experience to ensure these programs create genuine collective value for both startups and corporates.”

Fu’s background has primarily been in financial services in Europe and Asia and he began working with fintech startups while at a multinational bank. He launched the Africa office for Nest, a Hong Kong-based VC and Accelerator, where he led investments and innovation programs with Barclays, Visa and the World Bank. He also launched Mettā in Nairobi, a global members club for founders, investors and corporate leaders.

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