Endeavor has named the three early-stage companies are in the first cohort of its 2022 Scale Up program.
The non-dilutive, five-month accelerator aims to support high-potential, fast-growth entrepreneurs by giving them access to resources, successful founders and mentors in Endeavor’s regional network to scale to the next level, according to a news release.
“Endeavor is thrilled to support this next cohort of high-potential entrepreneurs in our Scale Up program," said Jackson Andrews, Endeavor’s founding managing director, in the release. “Through our Scale Up program, we connect these entrepreneurs to Endeavor’s network of high-growth entrepreneurs, board members, mentors, and partners. The Scale Up entrepreneurs are the next generation of founders who will make an exponential impact on our region — creating jobs, building wealth, and then ultimately giving back to new entrepreneurs themselves.”
The 2022 Scale Up companies are:
- pramā — Founded in 2019 by CEO Srinivasa “Raju” Eedarapalli and Chief Strategy Officer Scott Herrmann, pramā is a cloud-native, low-code software development platform used to rapidly develop and deploy enterprise-class digital solutions up to 20 times faster and at about one-fifth the cost of traditional methods. Offered as a platform as a service (PaaS), the company's intuitive visual modelers, designers and reusable widgets allow even novice developers to build, deploy and manage complex business solutions with little or no coding.
- ZeroCarb LYFE — After being diagnosed with diabetes in 2006, ZeroCarb LYFE’s Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer Mohamed Aly was determined to eat his favorite food: pizza. This led to countless hours to develop a zero-carbohydrate, zero-sugar pizza crust recipe. Mohamed joined forces with ZeroCarb LYFE’s Co-Founder and CEO Omar Atia, to launch their product in 2020. In the company’s first full calendar year, it achieved over $700,000 in sales by going direct-to-consumer and foodservice channels.
- DiningTek — DiningTek, founded by CEO Jaspal Singh and COO Linda Carlson, is an all-in-one business development platform and marketplace for the food and dining industry. The company, headquartered in both Louisville and New Albany, Indiana, delivers automated marketing, unique customer branding and on-line sales under one artificial intelligence (AI) powered platform to restaurant and food merchants to improve their profit margins, customer retention and brand elevation.
At the start of the program, entrepreneurs will complete GrowthX’s Product Market Fit Workshop to review and assess their ideal customer profile and product-market fit. They will also receive an in-depth financial review from EY and be able to access the 7 Driver’s of Growth assessment through EY Velocity.
The program includes tailored workshops, including a Behind the Scenes VC Pitch with Lightship Capital and Poplar Ventures. Finally, Scale Up Entrepreneurs will pitch at the Scale Up Acceleration Panel to receive tactical, meaningful feedback from a group of top regional mentors, the release continued.
Endeavor launched its regional Scale Up program in 2019. Since then, 21 regional companies including Authenticx (Indianapolis), GoWild (Louisville), EZ Chow (New Albany), Native (Cincinnati) and Costello (Indianapolis) have completed Scale Up.
