Graduating our first Accelerator class following Demo Day in Kampala, Uganda
On 24th June 2013, Savannah Fund graduated its first cohort of startups at a Demo Day in Kampala, Uganda on the eve of the Pivot East conference (www.pivoteast.com). The startups each took $25,000 investment for 15% common equity. The Savannah Fund accelerator arranged 12 sessions in Nairobi at the iHub and accumulated over 30 hours of mentoring from both local and international mentors that span tech companies and experienced entrepreneurs including Carey Eaton of Cheki and Brighter Monday, Eran Feinstein of 3G Direct Pay, Max Ventilla of Google Product Management, as well as international VCs from South Africa to Silicon Valley.
Savannah Fund has opened its applications for the next cohort of startups to begin end of July/August- www.savannah.vc/accelerator
The 3 startups are from 3 different African countries; Ghana, Uganda and Kenya.
Ahonya: E-commerce for electronics and computers founded by Gerard Yitamkey, Nana Addo and Philip Adzanoukpe. It aims to be the Amazon of Ghana, allowing Ghanaians to access quality products, which are currently sold offline at exorbitant prices, at low price points. Ahonya has fulfilled over 600 sales since launch less than a year ago
Kola Studios: Kola Studios is a developer and publisher of Social Mobile games for the web, smartphone & tablet devices. Matatu, a local Ugandan card game, is one of their most popular games with over 4 million games played in a year, a localized version for Kenya, Karatu was recently launched. Kola’s Android games are downloaded 200 times a day with 30,000 games played day. Kola Studios is focused on creating compelling cross-platform , social and entertainment apps to the mass market. Founded in 2011, Kola is headquartered in Kampala Uganda.
Safaridesk: Returning Kenyan diaspora, Irvine Ndwiga has been living in Australia and has teamed up with a talented and experienced programmer and New Zealander Paul Hunkin to create an online travel booking platform for East Africa. The platform aims to connect vendors with clients, centralizing payments, ratings, reviews, communication, support and presentation. It plans to integrate mobile and social platforms. The first version of the product was launched in May 2013. Safaridesk is a US Delaware registered company.
