The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is Back with a New Initiative For Egyptian Startups!
JICA’s NINJA business plan competition aims to fund and mentor startups in building a more sustainable Egypt.
Running a successful startup in countries in the Middle East, like Egypt for example, involves tackling quite unique challenges. The Middle East has quite the analytical workforce, and with the failure of many startups, comes the crucial step of applying the lessons learned.
JICA, the Japanese governmental development agency, aims at fostering innovation by collaborating with local startups to contribute to Sustainable Developmental Goals in various countries, including -but not limited to- Egypt.
Here’s how JICA wants to help
This time around, JICA launched the “NINJA business plan competition” to specifically promote businesses emerging in response to the COVID 19 pandemic. NINJA is short for “Next Innovation with Japan”.
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Expertise at your startup’s disposal:
PractiQ Digital Consultants Team was hired to provide Monitoring and Mentoring services for the selected startups. PractiQ is a management consulting firm specialized in Managing transformations through technology-friendly enablement. They operate across different functional streams including decision support, operations efficiency, and capacity building.
In addition to mentorship and the strict startup diets that Practiq commands, they also created a platform for their incumbent startups to seamlessly deal with tax and social insurance compliance with the Egyptian Government.
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Are you “successful” enough to apply to NINJA?
Well, it’s not so easy, but we’ve broken it down to 2 things:
Business readiness: Since its inception, how has your business value proposition changed? Did your product or service reach an adequate product-market fit? Are customers pulling your product or are you trying to force it on them, to no avail?
Investment readiness: Injecting money into a startup is not a foolproof way to grow. Sometimes it can be bad. So, is your startup mature enough to handle investing and spending money with a high ROI?