Endeavor has announced the three companies that will participate in the first cohort of the 2022 Scale Up program across Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. In partnership with EY, Scale Up is a non-dilutive growth accelerator that supports high-potential, fast-growth entrepreneurs by giving access to the resources, successful founders, and mentors in Endeavor’s regional network to scale to the next level. In 2022, Endeavor will select and run two cohorts (from March to June and from August to December) and each cohort will have a maximum of four companies.
Scale Up Program
Through Endeavor’s 5-month Scale Up program, entrepreneurs will receive direct mentorship from current Endeavor Entrepreneurs, Board Members, and Mentors. To kick off the program, entrepreneurs will complete GrowthX’s Product Market Fit Workshop to review and assess their ideal customer profile and product-market fit. Entrepreneurs 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.
Leading regional organizations, including Innovatemap (Indianapolis), GrowthX (Nashville), VentureFirst (Louisville & Cincinnati), Fleur de Lis Communications (Louisville), On Plane (Louisville), and more provide mentoring to Scale Up entrepreneurs through the program.
“Endeavor is thrilled to support this next cohort of high-potential entrepreneurs in our Scale Up program” shared Endeavor’s Founding Managing Director, Jackson Andrews. “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.”
Endeavor launched their 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. The goal of Scale Up is to accelerate the growth of high-potential entrepreneur-led businesses and further Endeavor’s mission of scaling up, going big, and giving back.
Current Scale Up Entrepreneurs
The three companies selected to participate in this cohort are:
Company: Prama
Entrepreneurs: Srinivasa “Raju” Eedarapalli (CEO) and Scott Herrmann (Chief Strategy Officer)
Location: Louisville, KY
Industry: IT Services
Founded in 2019, and based in Louisville, Kentucky, Prama is a groundbreaking 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), Prama’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. By empowering companies to create solutions to address their complex needs, as well as pursue new innovations, Prama is changing the way software is designed and developed.
Learn more at: https://www.goprama.com/
Company: ZeroCarb LYFE
Entrepreneurs: Omar Atia (CEO), John Pena (Chief Growth Officer), Mohamed Aly (Chief Creative Officer), Leslie Hawkins (COO)
Location: Louisville, KY and Evansville, IN
Industry: Food & Beverage – CPG
After being diagnosed with diabetes in 2006, ZeroCarb LYFE’s Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Mohamed Aly, was determined to each 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, ZeroCarb LYFE achieved over $700,000 in sales by going direct-to-consumer and foodservice channels. Additional product lines are in development, including ZeroCarb LYFE fully-topped frozen pizzas, chips, taco shells, breadcrumbs, and pasta. The company continues to keep its products keto-friendly, gluten free, sugar free, and dairy free, and aims to maintain product quality as they rapidly scale.
Learn more at: https://zerocarblyfe.com/
Company: DiningTek
Entrepreneurs: Jaspal Singh (Co-Founder, President & CEO), Linda Carlson (Co-Founder, COO)
Management Team: Arun Kumar (CTO), Gurjeet Gill (CPO), Ravi Nathan (VP of Finance), Michele Carlson (VP of Operations & Marketing)
Location: New Albany, IN and Louisville, KY
Industry: Food & Beverage – Software-as-a-Service
DiningTek is an All-in-one Business Development Platform and Marketplace for the food and dining industry. DiningTek 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.
Learn more at: https://www.diningtek.com/
About Endeavor
Endeavor is the leading global community of, by, and for High-Impact Entrepreneurs — those who dream bigger, scale faster, and pay it forward. Driven by our belief that High-Impact Entrepreneurs transform economies, Endeavor is on a mission to build thriving entrepreneurial ecosystems in emerging and underserved markets around the world. Endeavor creates a Multiplier Effect by inspiring high-growth founders to dream bigger, supporting and investing in them to scale faster, and providing a platform to pay it forward — thereby compounding their individual impact.
