Venture platform, Binance Labs, has announced the graduates from season 2 of its incubation program. The list includes Nigerian fintech startup, Xend.
As Venture’s arm of the cryptocurrency exchange platform, Binance Labs incubates and invests in blockchain and cryptocurrency entrepreneurs. This is to help top founders bootstrap and achieve product-market fit in the global blockchain landscape.
Since inception, the lab has invested in 21 blockchain startups around the world.
For its second season, 13 startups were selected globally. Out of the 13 projects, four were African. These include – crypto-based donations platform Bit Sika (Ghana), anti-phishing solutions developer PhishFort (South Africa), private securities platform Raise (Kenya), and payments startup Xend from Nigeria.
A payments platform, Xend allows its users send and receive money to their local bank accounts or Xend wallets. These payments can be made both online and offline.
The startups selected were all part of a 10-week incubation program which started in March and culminated with a BUIDLers Day – an invite-only pitch event where the teams met with investors from the ecosystem in June.
“For the Binance Labs Incubation Program, we search all over the world for the strongest founders and projects to invest in. We are proud to have found 13 gems in Season II, and to have spent the past 10 weeks working with the BUIDLers to launch their demos and gained early traction.”
Ella Zhang, Head of Binance Labs.
During the period of incubation held in three chapters – San Franscisco, Berlin and Lagos – startups were mentored by Binance’s vast network of industry leaders. Each of the startups also received $120,000 in equity funding from Binance Labs.
In addition to funding, startups were provided with support for startup formation, regulatory/legal advice, recruiting, technical execution, fundraising, and marketing/PR.
These startups will continue to receive support from Binance as a way to help them leverage blockchain to solve the problems in their various regions. This way, Binance is looking to build a strong network of BUIDLers and eventually have the future game changers for the industry.
Congratulations to Xend, we wish them the best.
