Founders Factory Africa: Building and Scaling Startups in Africa

In this episode, I spoke with Sona Mahendra who is the Associate Program Manager at Founders Factory Africa where she helps manage the Build and Scale programs. Her passion sits at the intersection of business and biology, and she is immensely excited by the growing biotechnology industry in Africa.    FFA acts as investor, venture builder and an accelerator. They create concepts in-house, design and launch companies. FFA was launched in 2018 and is headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa. In the build programs they co-create concepts with founders, offering a lot of support while in the scale programs they act as an accelerator for already established businesses at the scale stage.  Information on how to apply to the programs is available on the FFA website. They provide cash, training, mentorship, and coaching.  Sona also has a blog called "Biology by Code". Her blog is about biotech in Africa, startups, health tech, entrepreneurship and a little bit of philosophy.  I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation on What startups and entrepreneurs are of interest to FFA? What areas they are interested in investing in? What skill(s) are most useful to possess as a biotech entrepreneur in Africa? What trends are currently having the most impact on biotech in Africa and how is that likely to play out over the next few years? Why and how investors should prioritize biotech in Africa