From Charity Nwakaudu, Abuja
Payday, a Pan-African Fintech startup, becomes the first Rwandan company in history to join the prestigious Techstars Toronto accelerator programme.
Techstars is an operational investment company that assists founders and early-stage entrepreneurs scale their vision into a thriving business, beginning with the Demo Day at the end of the programme where selected startups will be able to pitch to a carefully curated group of investors. The 3-month accelerator programme’s goal is to provide entrepreneurs with invaluable skills, resources, and connections to a large pool of global talent and investors.
The Chief Executive Officer, Favour Ori, in a statement released to journalists in Abuja yesterday, stated that joining Techstars will go a long way in advancing their business. ‘Joining Techstars will be a game-changer for us. This is an opportunity to work with and learn from outstanding mentors, as well as to leverage their experience, skills, and network to create a platform where all Africans, regardless of location, can enjoy financial inclusion.’
He added that Rwanda represents one of the best turnaround stories the world has seen in a generation. The word that best describes the founders and team behind Payday is ‘resilient’. Moreover, Payday has engineered a financial product that Africans need across the continent, and the recent traction they are seeing makes us believe that this is the start of something massive,’ says Sunil Sharma, Managing Director of Techstars Toronto. ‘We are thrilled to be able to co-invest with some of the best early-stage fintech and e-commerce investors in Africa,’ says Sharma.
The inclusion of Payday in this programme represents an endorsement from one of the world’s most reputable investor communities, emphasising the potential of the company’s business model and its commitment to developing innovative payment solutions that will simplify how Africans move money around the world.
Techstars has 15 unicorns under its umbrella. Some of the notable ones include; SalesLoft, SendGrid, ZipLine, Chainalysis and DataRobot, etc. We are sure going to be the NEXT!