**Three Winners to Get N10m
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) has announced the inaugural edition of its hackathon and idea innovation contest known as the X-Kathon, which was designed to enable the growth of the Nigerian capital market.
Theme for the maiden edition is Millennial Participation in The Capital Market and will focus on enhancing retail investors’ participation in the nation’s capital market.
Speaking on the initiative, Head of Enterprise Innovation Hub at the exchange, Mr John Nsikak, stated that technology was essential to drive growth in the Nigerian capital market.
Mr Nsikak further noted that with the current disruption all over the world, other financial sectors like the banking sector were catching on but the capital market was yet to capitalize on the opportunity.
He said, “While the banking sector has witnessed an increased level of innovation and disruption, leading to the creation of more value for customers, the capital market is yet to experience the same wave of change.”
He said the introduction of the X-Kathon was one of the ways in which the exchange was tapping into the treasure-trove, pointing out that, “At the NSE, we intend to change this narrative by leveraging X-Kathon as one of the platforms to crowdsource ideas and solutions that will catalyze innovation and startups’ participation in our market.”
“With X-Kathon, NSE is inspiring stakeholders in the Fintech industry to solve participation challenges in a fun and pragmatic way through the development of simple, yet meaningful solutions,” he added.
Mr Nsikak said the X-Kathon is open to talented individuals, teams and ventures in the tech ecosystem, who possess the “magic wand” to explode the growth potentials of the capital market.
He then used the opportunity to call on founders of startups and creative groups to leverage this opportunity in order to build a closer relationship with both the Nigerian Stock Exchange and the capital market.
Interested participants were urged to submit their creative ideas, software and technology solutions and hacks on how to address the marginal participation of millennials in the capital market to http://www.nse.com.ng/x-kathon before October 8, 2019 deadline.
Candidates will be drilled and undergo rigorous review and the top 10 entries will be invited to a boot camp ahead of the grand finale on October 24, 2019.
The overall winner of the maiden edition of the X-Kathon will win the sum of N5 million, while the first and second runner ups will take home N3 million and N2 million respectively.
Modupe Gbadeyanka