Enhancing entrepreneurship in South Africa

The focus of the Acceleration Program was to build the capacity of South African students and support graduates in their aspirations to become successful entrepreneurs in the challenging energy industry. The five-month virtual acceleration program featured six group training sessions and individual mentoring sessions with the student teams. The acceleration program started on December 8th, 2022, with a kick-off meeting and ended on April 27th, 2023, with the completion of the last training session. A total of nine student teams participated in the accelerator program.

Throughout the program the student teams were requested to develop and submit three deliverables to be considered as successful graduates of the program. Within the framework of finalizing and submitting the deliverables specific activities were completed. The respective activities culminating in the submission of the deliverables were the following: Business Model development, prototype/ proof of concept and Pitch deck. Also, the subject of the training sessions included: Business Model, Product development, Financial Projections, Pitching, Legal and tax issues and Funding opportunities. At the same time students were supported by mentoring sessions.

The final pitching event took place in Limassol in the premises of ARIS (A Really Inspiring Space, in association with Deloitte) where the three successful teams pitch their ideas and receive their certificates of participation. Participants gave very positive feedback saying that they have benefited a lot to make crucial steps in moving forward their ideas and develop their products.

At the Deloitte Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centre we are happy to contribute to the development of start-up ecosystem and exchange good practices and ideas on the entrepreneurship and innovation fields from other countries.

For more information you can visit the project’s website here: https://eurydice.cut.ac.za/