South Africa’s Grindstone Accelerator has partnered Naspers Labs to launch GrindstoneX, a new all-female accelerator programme designed to make women-led startups more investible, scalable, and exit-ready.
Founded in 2014 and co-owned by Knife Capital and Thinkroom, Grindstone focuses on assisting high-growth, innovation-driven companies to enable scale in their businesses. Naspers Labs, meanwhile, is the youth development programme of global consumer internet group and technology investor, Naspers.
The two organisations have joined forces to launch GrindstoneX, which each year will source 10 of the best female-founded South African businesses and put them through Grindstone’s 12-month growth engineering programme, which assesses a business on its unique merits and then enables them to undergo business transformation and growth via targeted interventions.
“There is so much untapped female entrepreneurial talent in South Africa, and we need to get creative in how to unearth this at scale. Value-adding partnerships between innovative corporates such as Naspers Labs and programmes with a successful track record of engineering start-up growth such as Grindstone focuses efforts on tailored interventions for founders that positively impact on their business’s metrics,” said Grindstone partner Keet van Zyl.
“We are honoured to be able to invite our country’s talented female-founded start-ups to apply for the GrindstoneX accelerator programme. As Naspers Labs, we are committed to assisting the development of micro-enterprises with an emphasis on young women. Through this partnership we aim to help grow the tech sector and the economy by unlocking the potential of female-founded start-ups,” said Mapule Ncanywa, head of Naspers Labs.
The GrinstoneX Programme in partnership with Naspers Labs is open to all South African citizens, and startups interested in applying to the programme can do so here.
