How to Participate in the Pegasus Fintech Challenge By DLM Capital Group

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Pegasus Fintech Challenge
Pegasus Fintech Challenge | Brand Spur

SOFRI, a digital banking subsidiary of DLM Capital Group has announced the inaugural edition of its Fintech pitch competition themed Pegasus Fintech Challenge. The Pegasus Fintech Challenge will be executed in partnership with the top tech accelerator, African Fintech Foundry.

The selected finalists will participate in a pitch event where the top 2 finalists get cash prizes and the winner gets seed capital. It is worth noting that Startups are selected to pitch based on the information submitted during the application.

Pegasus Fintech Challenge
Pegasus Fintech Challenge | Brand Spur

So here are the key dates during the pitch journey:

The application has started, the portal started receiving the application from the 1st of June, 2021 and is expected to stop receiving the application on the 18th of June, 2021.

Interested participants are invited to submit applications by sending details of their product as well as a demo to https://mypitch.dlm.group/ before June 18, 2021.

On the 18th of July, the top 10 application would be selected and on the 28 of July, the top 10 finalists get to pitch their idea to a Jury and from this on the 9 of August 2021 would emerge the top 3 finalists who qualified to win the grand prize.

And finally between 10 August to 10 September, the winners would explore integration and commercial opportunities with DLM Capital group. So you might be wondering what are the benefits of participating.

Here are the benefits that might interest you:

  • Help source seed capital
  • Integration with existing DLM Capital offerings. This is an opportunity to pursue integration with DLM Capital Group and its subsidiaries.
  • A chance to have Sofri’s parent company, DLM Capital Group become principal Investor

Those are three mouth-watering benefits you don’t want to miss as a problem solver.

Well, here are the eligibility criteria for joining the challenge:

  1. Solutions must focus on financial technology to strengthen financial services in Nigeria.
  2. Solutions must focus on speed and convenience
  3. Demonstrating traction, ideally between Seed and Series A stage
  4. Fintech Startup must be based in Nigeria.
  5. The company must be at least 1 year in operation
  6. Applicants can be pre-revenue but must have a scalable product or service with a significant total addressable market and defensible growth model.

Now you know the eligibility criteria, you must be thinking hard about how to win. We have something for you that might want to consider when creating your application or pitch deck.

Here are what to consider in order to be selected:

1. Product assessment of the business

You need to answer these questions while crafting your deck for presentation and the product related questions are:

    • Is your solution actually solving a real problem and
    • how is it solving it?
    • Is the product user-friendly?
    • Is the solution a necessity or nice to have?
    • Who is your product’s target audience?
    • Do they have a unique selling point?
    • What differentiates you from competitors?

2. Product Technology or Innovation Adopted

When it comes to technology or how innovative solutions is then you should consider these questions:

    • Is the process seamless?
    • Is the market ready for such a solution?
    • Is it a unique solution or approach is been adopted?

3. Product Sustainability To Grow The Business

The Jury wants to know how sustainable your idea or business is. What is that plan to make it last for long and evolve? Answering the following questions would help you in crafting this part:

    •  Has your product been launched to the market yet?
    • How ready is your product to take over the market?
    • Will it be easily adopted?
    • How many months/years have you been in operations?

4. Product/Business Scalability Plan Across or Within The Nigerian Borders or both

Here the Jury wants to know how profitable your idea is and if the current target market is lucrative enough for this product. They want to know if this is a product and market fit situation. Here are questions you should ask when answering this:

    • Is the target audience large enough to break even?
    • Can the solution be used outside Nigeria? If some show a case study or strong enough evidence why it can be adopted in other places.
    • How many customers/users do you have?
    • How scalable is the solution

5. Product/Business Financial Resources At Your Disposal

The Jury wants to know how financially capable you currently are as a business. Do you currently possess what it takes to make this idea a reality? Here are questions you need to answer to frame this:

    • How much have you made so far?
    • Do they have the required team to scale the business?
    • What Resources do you have at your disposal to keep you in business?

6. The Brains Behind The Business

In this section, they want to know the faces behind the business, what they do(roles) and maybe how they do what they do. Here are questions to help frame this section

Are the founders devoted to the business or is it a side hustle?

    • Who are they (Biography)?
    • What is the qualification of the team?
    • What are their skillsets?

Information is an asset and having this knowledge will help you build a better pathway for your business if succeed at the challenge and even if not, it is a learning process that helps you see how your idea can live in the world.

Good luck with your application.

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