Esther Ndeti: Expand Start-up Support to Skills and Value Addition Post-investment
Investors in early-stage start-ups should support science and technology-based firms in addition to providing financial backing by including skill transfers or value addition after the investment.
Esther Ndeti: Expand Start-up Support to Skills and Value Addition Post-investment
Investors in early-stage start-ups should support science and technology-based firms in addition to providing financial backing by including skill transfers or value addition after the investment.
Esther Ndeti, the Investment Principle at Unconventional Capital (UnCap), stated that innovation-based businesses have a limited number of investors who have the skills to evaluate all of the company’s components and even fewer who work with such businesses in emerging markets while delivering the keynote address during the Investor Summit of the 2022 National Science Week at the Kololo Ceremonial Grounds.
“For early-stage investors, there needs to be a transfer of skills or some type of value-added post-investment,” she said, pointing out that investing involves more than just transferring money.
In order to properly evaluate and add value to businesses that rely on innovation, most investors don’t have enough scientists or tech-based leaders on their teams, according to the speaker. Banks, for instance, rarely offer specialized products for innovation, which results in a general funding gap in the tech start-up sector.
Sheila Ndeti
Uganda is one of the fastest-growing start-up funding destinations in Africa, according to Disrupt Africa’s annual African Tech Startups Funding Report, expanding at a rate comparable to that of Zimbabwe, Rwanda, and Ivory Coast.
Despite this expansion, however, early-stage science and technology-based enterprises continue to encounter major obstacles when trying to secure finance as a member of the sub-Saharan African SME ecosystem, which, according to the World Bank, has a $330 billion funding gap.
Ndeti lists a few of the difficulties faced by early-stage startup innovators, including their lack of knowledge of the range of investors, products, and other opportunities available to them; the lack of adequate collateral for debt financing from traditional financing institutions; and perception-based difficulties resulting from the fact that businesses led by women and young people are more likely to experience cultural biases, which reduces the amount of funding they can receive.
The Minister of Scientific, Technology, and Innovation, Dr. Monica Musenero, stated during the forum’s opening ceremony: “We are actively paving the way for our science, technology, and innovation start-ups to get the funding they need for viable projects. We will serve as a bridge at this event and give innovators a place to present their ideas to potential backers so they may get the funding they require.
