Solutech is among Sixty African tech startups that have been awarded equity-free funding by Google for Startups through its US$4 million Black Founders Fund Africa.
In July 2020 Google launched the US$3 million Google for Startups Black Founders Fund Africa, which is part of Google’s racial equity commitments announced in June 2020.
In the first cohort, fifty founders from Africa were awarded equity-free funding in October 2020 in a bid to drive growth for their companies.
Following a successful cohort of the first edition, this year, 2022, Google announced an additional US$1 million towards this fund to support 10 additional founders, thus taking the total investment commitment to US$4 million to fund 60 eligible black-founded startups across Africa.
Solutech did not apply for the 1st Cohort as we felt that we were not ready to be in the program at that point as we were rapidly scaling our tech and building capacity to resurge from the Covid-19 Pandemic. When Google announced the second edition of the fund this year, we did not hesitate to make an application as we felt it was time to be in the program. Despite applications from thousands of incredible startups across Africa, we are quite happy to have been selected among to top 60 tech companies in Africa (Botswana, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe) to receive non-dilutive (equity free) funding from Google.
Solutech is a leading sales force and route-to-market automation company working with leading manufacturers and distributors in now 8 countries in Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Zambia, DRC Congo, Ethiopia, and Sudan), and we are aiming to expand our client base to other countries in Africa and beyond.
Having been very successful with sales automation in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector, we are expanding our product offering to the B2B market, the financial, pharmaceutical, building, and construction sectors, and complimenting this with “Data As A Service” offering.
In addition to the equity-free funding, this scaling will be made possible by the $200K in Google cloud and marketing resources we will receive from Google, and access to Google products, services, and experienced talent pool to help us scale our tech stack and processes.
Our mission is to empower small and large businesses by creating efficiencies that bring about growth opportunities and in the process, create employment and improve livelihoods towards the attainment of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8 on decent work and economic growth. We see Micro, Small, and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) as key enablers in achieving this.
We are definitely delighted about this non-dilutive funding, as well as the mentorship and support that comes with it. We look forward to all the meaningful impact it will make for the 10K+ MSMEs we directly impact on a daily basis.
#FundBlackFounders
The official announcement on the official Google Black Founders Fund Website: https://www.campus.co/africa/black-founders-fund/ and Google Africa Blog:
https://africa.googleblog.com/2022/09/meet-google-for-startups-black-founders.html
Mutie Mule, COO, Solutech Limited
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