Faced with the difficulties encountered by new businesses to take off or survive after their creation, the Promotion Agency for Small and Medium Enterprises (APME) will set up, on June 15, 2020, a new support tool for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME). This is the “Prototyping Fund”, abbreviated as “Proto Fund”.
A release from the Promotion Agency of SME’s in Cameroon states that “the purpose of the proto Fund “is to reduce the difficulties experienced by entrepreneurs and protect intellectual property relating to their project ideas or their project. The objective of the Proto Fund is to facilitate access to the product/service market, by producing final prototypes over a horizon of at most three years after the start of the project. “
“It will also be capable of mobilizing financial players and banking institutions to finance the prototyping stages, as well as ensuring the viability and sustainability of the Fund.”
Applications for the first edition of this Fund are scheduled to open on June 15, 2020. It will remain open for one month.
Thus, “the beneficiaries must present a sample or a model of the finished product for the search for funding. The competition is open to entrepreneurs or managers of small and medium-sized enterprises under the age of 35. We also expect SMEs that are already functional and bearer of ideas for innovative projects or startups, ”it says.
In the end, “20 SMEs and project leaders from the ten regions will benefit, each year, from support from this Fund; 20 innovative products/services will be developed and will have a proof of concept, a prototype tested on the identified markets. We are also talking, in the same process, of 20 innovative products/services that will be marketed within a three-year time horizon.”
