16 Business Teams Advance to 2nd Stage of KIC Agritech Challenge

Sixteen business teams have successfully advanced on to the second stage of the Kosmos Innovation Center (KIC) 2019 AgriTech Challenge.

They are Farmklass, FishConnect, Athena, Cocoa Aboye, AiScarecrow, UGreen Technologies, Agroplast, Calidad, TheremoStore, Coologi, ClimaTek, Coconut Connect, UFeed, Sylkroad and Abapa Express

The 16 were selected from an initial 21 business teams who had participated in the first round of pitches in May 2019.

The KIC AgriTech Challenge is a business competition launched to encourage young entrepreneurs to use innovation and information communication technology (ICT) to develop lasting commercial solutions to challenges faced in Ghana's agriculture sector.

Following the first pitch round, the 16 shortlisted businesses were given a six-week period to embark on further market research.

During this time, the business teams worked to validate their minimum viable product (MVP) development and execution plan, conduct competitor analysis, and test their proposed revenue model and product-market fit.

Each of these aspects will be critically assessed by the panel of judges during the second-round pitch event.

Joe Mensah, Vice President and Country Manager, Kosmos Energy, in a statement said, "We are seeing a new trend emerge amongst the businesses in this year's competition. For the first time, a number of the businesses are combining mechanical and technological solutions, to help improve farming practices and mitigate post-harvest losses.

"These are critical areas to ensure sustainability in food production and storage for the long term. We are delighted to be seeing more impressive and ambitious business solutions as the programme progresses each year. The KIC attracts exceptionally bright minds and entrepreneurial business talent; we need to harness and develop them beyond agriculture to other critical sectors of the economy," he said.

Powered by Kosmos Energy, the KIC continues to grow in strength and scale each year; offering robust, tailor-made capacity building programmes and mentorship opportunities to young entrepreneurs.

To date, the young entrepreneurs have received over 16 capacity building and business development courses including, financial management principles for entrepreneurs, minimum viable product marketing workshop, as well as 'Team Effectiveness: Leadership and Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)Training'.

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