For the second consecutive year, Nigerian Tech Entrepreneur -Solape Akinpelu, Founder of Hervest, Wins $30,000 2025 Aurora Tech AwardLagos, Nigeria. Monday, April 14, 2025. For the second consecutive year, a Nigerian female tech entrepreneur has clinched the prestigious Aurora Tech Award. Solape Akinpelu, founder of Hervest, was announced as the 2025 winner of the $30,000 prize at the grand finale held in Cairo from April 11–13. She follows in the footsteps of fellow Nigerian, Folake Owodunni, who won the award in 2024—marking a powerful moment for Nigerian women driving innovation in the global tech space.Hervest is a fintech platform providing financially underserved African women access to savings, impact investing, and credit, particularly for smallholder female farmers.Other top four outstanding female tech founders recognised at the event include the first runner-up, founder of Nido Contech Loretxu Garcia Arraztoa from Chile; the second runner-up and founder of FlexiBees Shreya Prakash from India; the Chief Executive Officer, Arkangel AI Laura Velásquez Herrera from Colombia; and the founder of UpLeap Leonie Korn from Switzerland.The 2025 Aurora Tech Award winner will receive a cash prize of $30,000, while the second and third places get $20,000 and $15,000, respectively. The fourth and fifth places are entitled to $10,000, respectively. Each finalist will gain exclusive access to the right investors, industry leaders, and strategic partners who can move the needle on their business.The winners will also tap into inDrive’s expertise, team, and global network, giving them the support and resources to accelerate their growth, secure funding, and scale globally. The flagship event brought together the top 10 finalists from around the world — women building market-defining ventures — to compete for the main award prizes.This year’s shortlist featured groundbreaking innovators from MENA, LATAM, Central Asia, and APAC, whose startups span diverse industries, including artificial intelligence, fintech, and health tech. The 2025 edition of the award saw an unprecedented 2,018 applications from 116 countries, doubling the number of submissions from the previous year.The final stage of the competition occurred during the regional SHE CAN conference hosted by Entreprenelle, a leading Egyptian organisation dedicated to empowering women through education, training, and entrepreneurial support.
Since its inception in 2015, SHE CAN has become one of the MENA region’s most influential industry events, attracting over 7,000 attendees annually.Speaking on the award, Head of the Aurora Tech Awards, Isabella Ghassemi-Smith said the platform was created to help support innovators to take their ideas further. “The Aurora Tech Award isn’t about representation for the sake of it — it’s about backing the highest-potential founders building real companies. These women aren’t here because of their gender.
They’re here because they’re building businesses investors should care about. If the table wasn’t built for them, they didn’t wait for an invitation — they built their own. Aurora exists to ensure they get the capital, platform, and network to take it further,” Ghassemi-Smith said.Also speaking on the award, Evgenia Matrosova, Chief Growth Officer and Head of Ride-Hailing at inDrive, said the decision to support these innovators was to help break the gender barrier in investment.“Supporting female entrepreneurs in overcoming barriers and building strong networks is essential. Through the Aurora platform, we aim to attract future investment, boost visibility, and foster strategic partnerships. Our mission is to drive systemic change in emerging markets like MENA, closing the gender investment gap.
The Aurora Tech Award is not just an accolade, it’s a launchpad for the next generation of unicorn founders,” he saidFor more information on the Aurora Tech Award 2025 winners, visit Auroratechaward.com or our Linkedin.About the projectThe Aurora Tech Award, an initiative of inDrive, is a global award for the boldest tech founders building scalable, high-potential businesses, who just happen to be women. But this isn’t just about recognition—it’s a launchpad. Aurora provides winners with direct access to the right investors, industry experts, and a global network—everything they need to scale faster, grow smarter, and dominate their industries. It’s not just a competition, it’s a partnership that accelerates success and opens doors to the resources that truly matter.inDrive operates in over 888 cities in 48 countries.
Driven by its mission of challenging social injustice, the company is committed to having a positive impact on the lives of one billion people by 2030. It pursues this goal both through its core business, which supports local communities via a fair pricing model; and through the work of inVision, its non-profit arm.
inVision’s community empowerment programs help to advance education, sports, arts and sciences, gender equality and other vital initiatives.inDrive is a global mobility and urban services platform. The inDrive app has been downloaded over 300 million times, and was the second most downloaded mobility app in 2024. In addition to ride-hailing, inDrive provides an expanding list of urban services, including intercity transportation, freight delivery, task assistance and courier delivery.
For more information visit www.inDrive.comPlease find the photo for publication here.
Leave a comment