Start-ups Companies Woo Investors At ARM Demo Day

Ayodeji Ake

As the Fintech ecosystem in the country continues to grow and attract patronage and support, six start-ups companies have impressed industry watchers, stakeholders and potential investors at a Demo Day organised by ARM in partnership with Ventures Platform.

The Demo Day which signaled the end of ARM’s corporate Accelerator programme aimed at showcasing the progress made by the six start-ups was held at Impact Hub, Ikoyi, Lagos.

The programme tagged ‘Labs by ARM’ is an innovative plan designed to support start-ups to leverage technology, applications, and services to solve specific problems, and unlock verticals and markets thereby changing how users access and consume financial services.

As part of the project, a 12-week Accelerator programme was launched in February 2019, designed to help six early and growth stage Fintech start-up companies commercialise and grow the distribution of products and services.

The selected teams participated in deep-dive sessions to ascertain the health status of the start-ups and were supported to create unique strategies for solving the challenges.

Programme mentors and advisors, who are thought-leaders in their field, provided support around business growth, product-market fit, and distribution; helping the startups navigate specific challenges.

Within three months, one of the companies went live with their mobile app, another start-up grew the number of onboarded customers from 6000 plus to 10,000, further securing a partnership to onboard an additional 250,000 customers.

Explaining the rationale behind the project, Managing Director, ARM Financial Advisors, Herrietta Bankole-Olushina said they came up with the idea of Labs by ARM to partner and find a way to collaborate with the Fintech ecosystem.

According to her, the project was organised to tap into innovation available within the Fintech space and address many of the challenges they see with ARM as a business while also growing their market especially within the retail space.

Bankole-Olushina said ARM’s expectation is to have viable companies that they can integrate with in order to expand their offering to the retail finance services space. She also hoped to broaden ARM’s business and be potential investors in some of these companies.

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