BYLC Ventures: Cohort 4 winners announced 

Bangladesh Youth Leadership Center (BYLC) has recently announced the winners of BYLC Ventures: Cohort 4. 

The winning teams are Animo.AI, Biotech Energy Ltd, Premium Fruits, and Savoir Bangladesh. The names were announced Sunday (20 March). 

They will receive seed funding of Tk800,000 with the option of an additional amount as scale-up funding, reads a press release. 

Along with seed funding, the winning teams will gain access to a world-class business accelerator program, in-house mentoring and networking support, legal and virtual CFO support, rigorous leadership training, as well as a co-working space in the BYLC Mohakhali office). 

BYLC Ventures opened applications for Cohort 4 on 1 November 2020 and received applications from diverse sectors across Bangladesh. 

Between 10-12 December, more than 80 founders from 37 shortlisted startups took part in a three-day-long bootcamp at the Tea Resort and Museum in Sreemangal.

Sessions at the bootcamp covered various aspects of developing a startup idea, from identifying a real problem in society and refining the startup's solution to address the problem, to understand the customer persona and demographics of the target audience. 

On the final day of the bootcamp, the participants had the opportunity to pitch their startups in front of and receive hands-on feedback from Bangladesh Angels and BYLC Ventures.

After the selection bootcamp, 12 startups were selected for the final jury session, which was held on 5 February. 

The jury included Tina Jabeen, president of Bangladesh Startup Consortium, Anita Ghazi Rahman, founder and managing partner of The Legal Circle, Mridul Chowdhury, founder and CEO of mPower Social Enterprises Ltd, Nirjhor Rahman, CEO of Bangladesh Angels, and Ejaj Ahmad, founder and president of BYLC. 

The four winning startups will be joining BYLC Ventures' existing portfolio of 16 startups from the last three cohorts.