Malawi\u2019s first innovation hub and incubator for emerging entrepreneurs, mHub, and a local girls and womens\u2019 rights organisation, Her Liberty, on Friday launched a competition which seeks to reward the most innovative business proposals from emerging entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n
The proposals are supposed to be creative and likely to result into successful, high growth enterprises to foster job creation for Malawians.<\/p>\n
The competition, dubbed \u2018What will you do with K20 million\u2019 will see the winning proposal getting a K20 million business capital at the final pitch event slated for July this year.<\/p>\n
The overall winner will also benefit from a year-long incubation with mHub and its partners, where they will have opportunity to get guidance and mentorship towards the implementation of their business idea.<\/p>\n
According to team leader for Lilongwe Pitch Night, Emma Katengeza, who is part of the competition organising team, the competition was borne out of the need to address the needs of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, which are mainly financial access and business development support.<\/p>\n
\u201cMalawi has the potential of building a middle class that would eradicate unemployment and alleviate poverty,\u201d Katengeza said.<\/p>\n
The criteria for selection will include business ideas that have a clear business concept and strategy, value proposition, relevance and quality of product, technology or service, financial and social return.<\/p>\n
The applications for the competition, which is targeting young people aged 18 years and above, must also have sustainability, create impact and be unique.<\/p>\n
After the expiry of the May 31 deadline, 20 shortlisted candidates will undergo a week-long intensive training programme at mHub after which the semifinalists will be allowed seven consecutive days in June to edit and resubmit any materials before the final competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis includes business model summaries, business plans, 60-second marketing videos and prototypes. This resubmission period is intended to allow each team to refine their business model or plan based on judges\u2019 feedback but not to pursue a completely new entry,\u201d mHub said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Her Liberty Executive Director, Tikhala Itaye, said mHub and Her Liberty have partnered with European Investment Bank and National Bank of Malawi for financial support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Malawi\u2019s first innovation hub and incubator for emerging entrepreneurs, mHub, and a local girls and womens\u2019 rights organisation, Her Liberty, on Friday launched a competition which seeks to reward the most innovative business proposals from emerging entrepreneurs. The proposals are supposed to be creative and likely to result into successful, high growth enterprises to foster […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":43496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43493"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43498,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43493\/revisions\/43498"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}