Village Capital, Accion Venture Lab, and the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth Launch FinTech Accelerator Program in Mexico City
Mexico City, Mexico (PRWEB) December 03, 2014 -- Today Village Capital, in partnership with Accion Venture Lab and the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth, announced the launch of its accelerator program, Village Capital-Accion Venture Lab: FinTech Mexico 2015.
The program gives business development training to local entrepreneurs, who are making financial services more accessible to the underbanked and unbanked. At the end of the program, the two startups ranked highest by the other entrepreneurs in the group will each receive $50,000 USD in capital from Village Capital and Pomona Impact to help scale their businesses and impact.
The participating ventures in the program will collectively create 100 jobs and will also provide approximately 200,000 low-income Mexicans with greater access to financial services. Over the next two years, the program participants are expected to raise $1.4M in investment capital and demonstrate 250% revenue growth.
Village Capital-Accion Venture Lab: FinTech Mexico 2015 will benefit local communities and the Mexican economy as a whole. The program combines Village Capital’s award-winning curriculum and Accion Venture Lab’s deep knowledge in recruiting and supporting financial services ventures, and the entrepreneurs will receive exclusive mentorship from investors, industry experts, top local entrepreneurs, and potential customers.
Currently, the Village Capital-Accion Venture Lab: FinTech Mexico 2015 program is recruiting financial technology startups focused on the Mexican market. Twelve selected enterprises will participate in three intensive workshops in February, March, and April 2015.
Applications are open now (Village Capital-Accion Venture Lab: FInTech Mexico Applications) and will be accepted through December 12, 2014. The selected applicants will be announced mid-January 2015. For more information, please visit our website at http://www.vilcap.com.
About Village Capital
Village Capital sources, trains and invests in seed-stage social entrepreneurs around the world. Village Capital recruits entrepreneurs solving specific problems in agriculture, energy, education, financial inclusion, and health, and then puts the power of investment in the hands of the entrepreneurs, who award the prize investments to the two ventures ranked highest by their peers at the end of every program. The organization’s unique peer-selection model and curriculum were awarded Mckinsey/Harvard Business Review’s prestigious M-Prize for innovation in 2013. Since 2009, Village Capital has supported 400 enterprises across 27 accelerator programs in 7 countries over the past 4 years, screening 10,000 companies, with enterprises reaching 6 million customers, creating 5,000 jobs, and raising $80 million.
About Accion Venture Lab
Accion Venture Lab is the leading seed-stage investment firm for financial inclusion. Accion Venture Lab, since inception in 2012, has invested in 15 enterprises and screened nearly 1,000 companies in the financial inclusion space. V-Lab is part of Accion, a world pioneer in microfinance who over the last 40 years has helped build 63 microfinance institutions (MFIs) in 32 countries on four continents. Four of V-Lab’s 15 investments work in Mexico, and Accion has worked actively in the Mexican market for the last 2 decades, including an early investment in microfinance leader Compartamos.
About The MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth
The MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth was created to foster collaborative relationships between academia, governments, nonprofits, the social design community, and the private sector. Through the advancement of research and strategic philanthropic investments, the Center will support and enable those historically excluded from financial services and serve as a catalyst for change.
About Pomona Impact
Pomona Impact makes investments in Small Growing Businesses across Mexico, Central America, and Ecuador. In particular, it targets firms that improve the lives of people living in the bottom of the economic pyramid and benefit the environment. Pomona Impact seek to add value to portfolio companies through strategic advisory, financial structuring, and introductions to potential partners, and also actively seeks to build the entrepreneurial ecosystems in its target region by developing co-working spaces with substantial skill-building programming. They have launched two co-working spaces in Guatemala and intend to develop additional co-working projects in Central America.
Kate McCrery, Village Capital, http://www.vilcap.com, +1 917-691-4238, [email protected]
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