Barclays hunts for new ideas
Barclays Bank is inviting start-ups that look set to disrupt the financial sector to take part in an accelerator programme.
|||Cape Town - In what looks like a classic case of “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”, Barclays Bank is inviting start-ups that look set to disrupt the financial sector to take part in an accelerator programme that will effectively put them on a business version of steroids.
Barclays Africa this week called for applications from start-ups, small and medium-sized businesses and innovators on the continent for a place in a programme that will see 10 start-ups undergoing a three-month focused mentorship programme to accelerate their progress.
It is not hard to imagine a banking future where everyone is using cryptocurrencies like bitcoin for transactions, getting loans from the cloud and being funded by the crowd, but no one knows exactly what to expect, not even the financial services giants of today.
It seems likely that the future will be created – it is already being made, in fact – in the world’s innovative ecosystems, which are populated to a large extent by disruptive, small and medium sized businesses. And what better way to ensure a stake in that future than by incubating these innovators.
Ashley Veasey, chief information officer of Barclays Africa, has said that they are “looking for big, fresh ideas that promise to shake things up”.
New ideas
“The financial services industry is undergoing a paradigm shift and new tech start-ups are challenging traditional business models,” says Veasey. “This is possible, in principle, because advances in technology are enabling bright minds to develop solutions that compete with the best of those developed by big corporates. We aim to partner and collaborate at the forefront of this change.”
The Barclays Accelerator programme is being run in collaboration with Techstars, a global ecosystem that “exists to support the world’s most promising entrepreneurs throughout their lifelong journey, from inspiration to IPO”. With dozens of accelerator programmes and thousands of community programmes as well as access to tens of thousands of community leaders, founders, mentors, investors and corporate partners worldwide, the Techstars network helps entrepreneurs living anywhere in the world to bring new technologies to market.
The Barclays Accelerator programme will offer African innovators and entrepreneurs unprecedented access to leading thinkers at Barclays and to Techstars’ mentor and investor relationships across 14 locations. This latest Barclays Accelerator programme follows successful programmes in London and New York.
“The three-month intensive programme has been designed to accelerate new fin tech businesses in delivering breakthrough products to market,” says Veasey. “What we’re offering companies is a seat within a best-in-class accelerator programme, which in turn affords access to data, technology and intensive mentoring from industry experts and key decision-makers.”
Demo day
The programme will culminate in a ‘demo day’ to an audience that comprises industry leaders, serial entrepreneurs, senior executives and corporate partners.
In addition to giving the 10 successful African innovators access to data, technology and mentoring, the Barclays Accelerator programme will plug them into Rise Barclays, a fast expanding global digital platform designed to co-create and scale innovation, including Rise hackathons and innovation challenges such as the Barclays Africa Supply Chain Challenge and Tech Lab Africa.
In addition to the connected digital network, Rise has physical innovation hubs in London, Manchester and New York, and is set to open one in Cape Town in December. The Cape Town hub will be home to a number of open innovation programmes and includes co-working facilities, a world-class events space, and a bespoke setting for the Barclays Accelerator programme.
The Rise community is particularly relevant to the African context being digitally-based and therefore ideally positioned to take advantage of technology solutions that are not reliant on physical infrastructure. “It provides developing markets with an opportunity to leapfrog ageing analogue infrastructure, deployed in most developed economies, and with it the capacity to solve some of Africa’s development challenges,” according to a statement from Barclays.
Barclays’ chief design and digital officer and architect of the global Rise programme, Derek White, said: “Rise is about connecting the world’s most active innovators to each other, to corporates and to resources and by expanding to another continent means we’re able to broaden this network further.
“We’re unlocking the power of open innovation to co-create the future of financial services, which will ultimately benefit customers and clients across the globe,” added White.
Prize money
Other Rise initiatives are already underway in Africa, namely the Barclays Africa Supply Chain Challenge and the Tech Lab Africa programme. The Barclays Africa Supply Chain Challenge invited teams of innovators to submit ideas that will shake up the supply chain and add real value for millions of people. The competition is closed and at judging stage now. The winner, to be announced on November 3, will receive $10 000 in prize money as well as further mentoring from Barclays.
The Tech Lab programme, currently underway in Cape Town, is a support and mentoring programme for innovative, disruptive early stage ventures in the fields of fin tech and health tech. Of the 90 applications received, 10 ventures – three from Johannesburg, five from Cape Town and one each from Uganda and Nigeria – are midway through their three-month intensive mentoring programme in Cape Town.
With support from senior Barclays Africa executives, as well as local and international mentors and industry experts from leading corporate and institutional partners, Tech Lab Africa helps innovators refine, test and gear their proposition for scaling. This programme also amounts to, according to one of the senior managers, a three-month external due diligence process.
At the end of each of these various programmes Barclays Africa will have identified companies and ideas for investment or integration into bank. The bank will to a large degree have tried and tested exciting new ideas and companies during these processes and therefore be able to put forward investment opportunities that offer quite low risk for new, groundbreaking ideas.
The traditional bank, with a market capitalisation of R154 billion and 12 million customers today, will have built relationships and quite possibly loyalty with the architects of the future while expanding the investment pipeline for the bank’s private wealth clients.
AFRICAN NEWS AGENCY