Bankole Oluwafemi, editor, TechCabal
The application deadline for TechCabal’s Battlefield startup competition has been pushed from today until Friday, February 7, to allow more entrepreneurs to apply for the chance to win US$20,000.
HumanIPO reported last month TechCabal had partnered with Stanbic bank, Jobberman and Social Media Week (SMW) Lagos to launch Battlefield, which will take place on February 19 at Terra Kulture, Victoria Island, Lagos, as part of the 2014 edition of SMW Lagos.
“A cursory glance at the applications we’ve received so far tells me that if nothing at all, Battlefield will not be boring. And that is really understating how impressed we are with the quality and calibre of entries,” said TechCabal editor-in-chief Bankole Oluwafemi.
“As it stands right now, we could just close things down and move on to the next stage. But yesterday I was on radio with Nigeria Info’s Tolu Adeleru, speaking to an entirely different audience than I am used to about Battlefield and tech startups in Nigeria, and we thought it made sense to move the final deadline by a couple days, so we can reach more people with this message.”
Oluwafemi said applications will now close on Friday at midnight, with the review taking place over the weekend and the seven finalists announced on Monday, February 10.
“We hope this is good news for the chronic procrastinators who were planning on breaking our servers with last minute entries. Do not treat this as a further invitation to procrastinate. Apply now.”
HumanIPO reported last week the Battlefield prize money had doubled to US$20,000 after online music service iROKING pledged US$10,000.
The competition is open to startups with less than US$200,000 in funding and with an essential tech component to their businesses.
“To be honest, we are genuinely amazed at how the ecosystem is coming together to make things happen,” said Oluwafemi. “First is mainstream non-tech heavyweights like Stanbic IBTC making a this sort of visionary bet on technology startups. They were the first to believe in what we are trying to accomplish with the Startup Battlefield in Nigeria and contributed the lion’s share of the prize money.
“However, what we are also seeing here is startups making it happen for upcoming startups. These are remarkable and great developments for a fledgling tech ecosystem like ours. We are counting on the startups that benefit from this to remember the example that iROKING, Jobberman and Konga are setting today. Ecosystems become truly powerful when it’s members give back.”
