Hi-innovator Women Accelerator for Uganda Women 2023

Hi-Innovator set out to support small and growing businesses within the Ugandan ecosystem over a 5-year period. The program looks to impact 132,000 youths attached to 20 hubs/ESOs across the country, with a direct intention of touching the lives of 92,400 women employers and employees in the five regions of Uganda. To achieve this target, we are embarking on a women accelerator to give women entrepreneurs across all sectors an opportunity to improve their business skills, grow their businesses to be resilient while also making them more competitive and better placed to receive financial services. For this call, our target is to fund 100 women-owned or women-led businesses with each getting USD 20,000 grant funding, technical assistance, market linkages and support to raise follow-on financing.

About Hi-innovator

The Hi-innovator initiative is supporting small and growing businesses by extending catalytic seed funding, building the capacity of entrepreneurship support organizations to provide quality technical assistance and working with financing institutions to unlock affordable patient capital so that they can become more competitive. We work with Entrepreneurship Support Organizations and Investors to ensure that entrepreneurs establish high impact, sustainable businesses that can be scaled.... read more... read more

Women Accelerator

Aim and Benefits of Women Accelerator

The Hi-Innovator Women Accelerator has been designed for women-owned and women-led businesses operating in all sectors in Uganda. The program will be open to women running businesses with the potential to grow that have been in operation for at least 2 years.

During the program, businesses will get

USD 20,000

USD 20,000 grant funding and in turn provide a 6% equity stake ownership to NSSF

Support

Tailored technical support will be available to all busineses

Opportunities

Mentorship and peer-peer learning opportunities

Networking

Investor networking sessions, forward & backward market linkages

Learning content

Unlimited access to the learning content in the Business Academy

Requirements for Women Accelerator Qualification

• Fully registered with Uganda Registry Services Bureau (URSB), Uganda Revenue Authority (URA), and National Social Security Fund (NSSF). First time registration before application is acceptable
• The business should have been legally and actively operational in Uganda for at least two years.
• The business employs at least 2 full time staff with at least 50% of the staff below 35 years of age.
• The business should be 50% female owned and or have 70% women in top management/leadership positions.
• The business should have made a minimum annual revenue of Uganda Shillings 10 million in the past year and has not raised more than Uganda Shilling 1 Billion in grants, convertible grants, debt or private equity.
• Has evidence of 100% completion of the Hi-Innovator business academy course.
• Businesses in all sectors are eligible to participate.
• Willing to provide a 6% equity stake ownership to NSSF

Interview date, Process and Venue for Women Accelerator

Timelines

• Launch Day 23rd Nov 2022
• Foundation Course Dealine 31st Jan 2023
• BootCamp 6th - 19th Feb 2023
• Pitchday 20th - 24th Feb 2023
• Due Diligence 6th - 31st Mar 2023

Application Deadline

How to Apply

For more details, visit Hi-innovator website.