Founder Institute, a pre-seed accelerator, and Sterling Bank, a Nigeria-based technology financial institution are partnering to launch the HEART Pitchathon to offer $5000 support and ideas to tech founders.
According to the Founder Institute, HEART represents Health, Education, Agriculture, Renewable Energy, and Transportation.
The partners disclosed that the goal of this challenge is to identify founders with innovative ideas that have high growth potential and support them to accelerate their traction and growth by offering them Sterling HEART Fellowship, which affords them the opportunity to attend the FI Core Accelerator Program.
FI Core accelerator program pushes founders at the idea and pre-seed stages to reach the milestone needed for business investment.
The HEART Fellowship is focused on supporting and encouraging founders with products or service offerings that fall within any of the H.E.A.R.T sectors
This sector-specific grant will support five early-stage founders by granting them the opportunity to participate in the Lagos Fall Cohort of Founder Institute Lagos and access a bouquet of post-program support perks both from Sterling Bank and Founder Institute.
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The organisers explained that participants will receive scholarships up to $1000, have the opportunity to pitch their ideas to top start-up experts, and receive support across important areas like tech infrastructure and market access.
FI-Sterling stated that interested founders have the opportunity to apply for the programme before Thursday, June 30, 2022, which is the deadline.
Meanwhile, in January, Sterling bank announced this partnership in January, noting that it is for young tech founders whose businesses employ innovative solutions to tackle challenges in the HEART sectors.
David Adebayo, head, of business group and Partnerships at Sterling bank, in a statement issued by the bank in January 2022 said guidelines for selecting founders whose businesses fall within the Sterling HEART Fellowship category include founders who applied through either the customised Sterling HEARTs Fellowship application link or the direct FI Lagos application link.
According to him, the founder’s business must be in line with the HEART sectors and must have taken the assessment test and qualify for the accepted category to be eligible for the award.
