Sinapis: What every Start-Up needs

By Soko Directory Team / Published April 5, 2016 | 6:56 am

Every entrepreneur desires to succeed. Every entrepreneur desires to have someone watching over them. We all desire that seed capital to help us launch our idea. Sinapis has all these answers and more.

Sinapis is a social enterprise that empowers entrepreneurs in the developing world by providing them with a rigorous business education, world-class consulting and mentoring services, and access to seed capital.

From experience, Sinapis are capable of working with entrepreneurs and in turn make your revenues grow by 166 per cent in a year, create three new jobs and raise your investment capital 15 times after going through their program.

Apart from that, statistics have proven that Sinapis are over 70 per cent more likely to still exist in the business for the coming three years as compared to the national average.

Sinapis was started by three Harvard graduate students (who had worked at companies such as McKinsey, P&G, and PWC) in an effort to help prove a model that could help solve the main private sector bottleneck in Kenya, a lack of support (financial and human capital) for early stage entrepreneurs. This bottleneck was identified through research Courtney Mills, our Executive Director, performed in conjunction with Kenya’s Ministry of Finance during her time at Harvard.

Sinapis has three inter-related programs that include the Sinapis Entrepreneurship Training Program, which is made up of an intensive 4-month business training program similar to a mini-MBA but customized for earlier stage ventures. Participants in this program spend approximately 20 hours per week completing online coursework, attending in-person class sessions, and doing practical “field work” assignments that allow immediate implementation of lessons learned.

Once the training program is complete, the entrepreneurs are eligible to compete in the Sinapis Business Plan Competition, where the top finalists compete for $10,000 in seed capital at a live pitch event. The finalists in the business plan competition are then invited to join their Fast Track Fellows Program, which is a 6-month accelerator program that provides the entrepreneurs access to high quality generalist consultants, professional advisors, successful entrepreneur mentors, advanced trainings, and investor matchmaking.

Partners that have worked with Sinapis in deploying their training program include Makini Consultancy, who provide entrepreneurship training to the winners of the government’s “You Win” awards and iHub, who offer training on their tech & innovation community.

They have also partnered with some Churches in Nairobi including Nairobi Chapel, Nairobi Baptist, and Purpose Centre Church. Sinapis is looking forward to have taken their program in four other African countries in the next two years.

Article by Vera Shawiza.

About Soko Directory Team

Soko Directory is a Financial and Markets digital portal that tracks brands, listed firms on the NSE, SMEs and trend setters in the markets eco-system.Find us on Facebook: facebook.com/SokoDirectory and on Twitter: twitter.com/SokoDirectory

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