THE BOLD WOMEN COHORT BOOTCAMP: REFINING BUSINESS STRUCTURE

THE BOLD WOMEN COHORT BOOTCAMP: REFINING BUSINESS STRUCTURE

The Bold Women Cohort Bootcamp by Mkazipreneur ensued between 21^st to 23^rd August 2024, assembling 12 women-led businesses across the country at Four Points by Sheraton Kampala, for a process of incorporating and organizing their business structures to the finest details – with the ultimate goal of winning seed funding under the NSSF Hi-Innovator Program.

Mkazipreneur is a community platform whose existence since 2018 has been grounded on promoting qualitative and quantitative women entrepreneurship through skilling, networking, celebrating and empowering women entrepreneurs both across the country and the continent; having trained about 7,000 women entrepreneurs on a pro-bono basis and unlocking over $1,000,000 in seed funding to help them transcend their businesses to new heights.

The shortlisting process for the businesses to attend the bootcamp was needle-thin; with 189 small growing businesses (SGBs) applying for the cohort, where only 25 were advised by the experts at Mkazipreneur to express interest in being a part of the cohort, which finally resulted in the small pool of 12 businesses that attended the bootcamp.

At the bootcamp, sessions of key topics in entrepreneurship like business goal setting, assessing and building business technical competency, the marketing mix, economic and social rights, storytelling and pitch practice formed the bedrock of the facilitation by many partners and technical personnel, who added to the to-do lists of many entrepreneurs in attendance.

“The bootcamp facilitators have showed me the loopholes in my business and most of the systems they talked about made me reflect and understand the value of having them in place,” Khainza Milly, Kuchi Events Ltd.

Khainza Milly(left) of Kuchi Events Ltd. during an interactive break at the bootcamp

To show the women entrepreneurs that winning the prize money is possible despite the rigorous process, winners and peers in entrepreneurship, who doubled as either winners or applicants at previous cohorts were given the limelight on day one to share insights, from a position of experience, on how to win seed funding and more importantly, manage a successful and ever scaling business entity long after winning the prize money.

Charity Mbatudde, manager of Pink House spices Ltd, shares her experience in winning the prize money in the previous cohort

“Advice to entrepreneurs out there, this program is not just about the money. It helps you iron out a lot of things in your business,” Charity Mbatudde.

“At first, I failed to get the funding because I believed all I had to do was sort out my paperwork which made me skip important training like pitch practice and groundwork in my business which would have guaranteed success. After all the trial and error, I finally got the money the third time of trying because I balanced both the groundwork and documentation,” she added.

In the grand scheme of things, Mkazipreneur believes in fronting women entrepreneurship long after seed funding is gained. The bootcamp is one of the many examples of the ways the organization works tirelessly to connect entrepreneurs to gurus in the entrepreneurship world, who more often than not point to many areas of business management that get pushed to the curb and left there. To this end, Immy Nakyeune, the Team Lead at Mkazipreneur tasked the entrepreneurs to draw up their vision boards which they could hold themselves accountable to within the course of their business life.

“The vision boards have helped me as an entrepreneur to balance both my business and my personal needs like wellness and relationships which generally make me function as a human being. With this vision board, I set a number of goals for my mental health, physical health, family and some me time just to make sure I am the best version of myself so that my business can get the best out of me,” Immy Nakyeyune, Team Lead – Mkazipreneur.

Immy guiding an the different entrepreneurs in designing their vision boards

The team is confident that the bootcamp has been very insightful in building the confidence of the female entrepreneurs as they gear for Pitch Day on September 4, 2024. With the many facilitators who answered the call to prepare the entrepreneurs, drawing boards have to be revisited to finetune the different businesses if they are to be successful on pitch day. Some of the key topics visited include

“My standout session was conducted by Innocent Bagumira, the business coach, who spoke about how to strategize and manage our distribution channels that will enable us optimize sales of produce compared to our method of mass distribution,” Miriam Apolot, Akoho Agro Investment Ltd.

Bob Ogwang, the Program Lead of the NSSF Hi-Innovator, shared his heartfelt appreciation to the team of Mkazipreneur for being at the top of the game in identifying the businesses, profiling them and taking them through the necessary assessments.

“I believe that they (entrepreneurs) are more than ready to not only secure the seed funding but to also put their houses in order to scale their business operations to new and unprecedented heights.”

Bob Ogwang presenting on essential criteria for business compliance in the Hi-Innovator program