Orange Ventures launches Africa & Middle East Seed Challenge (Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Sénégal, Tunisia, Morocco and Jordan)

Deadline: 25-Jun-20

Orange Ventures Africa Middle & East has launched Africa Middle & East Seed Challenge to extend the scope to support younger and more innovative businesses on the continent with the seed investments from 50k€ up to 150k€.

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The investees will be announced by September 2020 and will integrate the Orange Ventures Africa Middle & East portfolio. Orange Ventures Africa Middle & East is a dedicated investment stream of Orange group on the African Middle & East continent with 50m€ assets under management and 5 companies in the current portfolio.

Benefits

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Funding
€50K to €150K funding, convertible note with standards terms.
Connection
12 months local mentor to support your business
What they are looking for

At Orange Ventures, they will lead your first money or co-invest alongside others in your seed round. So if,

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You have a bold vision with passion for disruption and expansion;
You are willing to partner with Orange;
You are a tech-driven start-up;
You are mainly operating in Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Sénégal, Tunisia, Morocco and Jordan;
You run Seed stage company, you have not raised more than €1m in total equity funding.
Eligibility Criteria

To be eligible to this challenge, you need

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that most of your operations is based in one of the selected country, or your startup is headquartered in one of those countries;
that you are seed or pre-seed;
you are mostly tech driven.
Then, based on the information you provided with your application, you are selected on our understandings of your growth potential and your fit with Orange strategic priorities.

Selection Criteria

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The process is composed of 5 different steps :

Step 1: Lead
They make a first analysis of your company to see if you match their basic criteria in terms of Geographical scope, Sectors and Investment stage.
At the end of this process, they’ll keep you updated if your company made it to the next step
Step 2: Priorisation
At this stage, they start to dig into your financials and investment deck. They will review 6 different categories:
Orange Ventures fit;
Quality of your application;
Market opportunity;
Team;
Product / Service;
Financials.
After this and depending on their analysis, they decide if they move forward in their process. They’ll send you an email to keep you updated on their process

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Step 3: Validation
They schedule an interview with you and your team to dig into your business. They may ask for some references (customers, team members, stakeholders etc.).
At the end of this step, they make their final selection and proceed to their last step.
Step 4: Due Diligence
During this step, their lawyers and partners will start the due diligence process (Legal, Tax and Financial) to control check that everything is in order within your company.
Step 5: Closing
They will announce the winners and proceed with the investment at Vivatech Paris 2020 in September 2020.
For more information, visit https://digitalventures.orange.com/mea-seed-challenge/