100 women-led businesses to share shs7.6bn in seed funding from NSSF Hi-Innovator program

At least 100 women owned or women led businesses will share a total of shs7.6 billion among themselves in seed funding from National Social Security Fund (NSSF) together with the Mastercard Foundation as part of the Hi-innovator Program.

The Hi-innovator – Women cohort launched on Wednesday will see each of the 100 businesses getting $20,000 in grant funding.

According to NSSF deputy Managing Director, Patrick Ayota, the initiative is aimed at supporting small and growing businesses by extending catalytic seed funding and building the capacity of entrepreneurship support organizations to ensure they can become more competitive.

“If we are going to help change the country build the economy, we have to intervene in areas that matter a lot. We decided to help startups and still growing businesses that have potential to grow to ensure we intervene. Think about companies like Whatapp, Uber and Dropbox among others whose intervention that helped propel them was as low as $25,000. The key thing is that somebody was willing to risk and invest in them and eventually they grew,”Ayota said.

He explained that NSSF looks at intervening where businesses are most vulnerable and grow with them to ensure they can be able to stand on their own and less risky.

According to the NSSF deputy Managing Director, they are looking it as a way of creating employment but also increase the number of the fund members.

He noted that they have live examples from the 105 startups that have been funded in the last two years of the program, noting that they are this time specifically looking at women owned or led businesses.

“This time we decided to see how many of our women we can help out in terms of businesses.”

Adrian Bukenya, the Country Manager for Mastercard Foundation explained that they are keen on promoting youth and women employment, adding that the NSSF Hi-innovator Program falls into this vision.

“Women are critical enable society move forward. We have a high percentage of women who are responsible for different parts of society and we feel it is important to give them an opportunity to participate in the economy,”Bukenya said.

He noted that the program aims at creating a bigger employment pool that will in turn see the tax base widen.

“This way the country will have a lot more sustainable income to participate in the economy. By doing this, we are creating employment and society will definitely improve by having more people earning and participating in economics.”

Criteria

Richard Zulu, the team lead at Outbox that will be implementing the program, participation is open to all women-owned and women-led businesses in the country, provided they are not more than two years old.

“The first criterion is that every business owner should complete an online course to take three to four weeks. Those who complete the course will be weighed to see if they meet the rest of the criteria including having been registered with URSB, URA and NSSF but if not yet registered, make sure by the time you are in the academy, you work on it,”Zulu said.

He explained that beneficiaries must be operational for a maximum of two years with evidence to show the business has been selling to customers in form of financial records and should not have raised more than shs1 billion from other sources including banks and any other investors.

“We want to ensure the money goes to the businesses that actual need it. One must be willing to share part of the business totaling to 6% with NSSF. One must have at least two full time staff members in the business.”

He added that the businesses must at least be 50% owned by women or at least 75% governed by women.