College Park, MD — OmniSpeech, the artificial intelligence (AI) voice technology company on a mission to remove noise and improve voice quality across any app, device, or environment today announced it has been accepted into the 7th BCGSpark Cohort of the Majira Project.
Majira was founded in 2016 as a partnership between Msaada Partners and the Boston office of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) as a way to spur community development through entrepreneurship. While working in various entrepreneurship programs across Boston, Majira Project founder, Kerry Bowie, noticed the lack of diversity in the traditional entrepreneurial ecosystem and the disparity in resources available to entrepreneurs outside of the ecosystem. With the support of his friend and classmate Roger Premo, they launched a pilot to provide six companies led by founders from and working in underserved communities with consulting from the Boston BCG office and coaching from Msaada Partners.
In 2020, the Majira Project spun off of Msaada Partners and formally incorporated as an independent non-profit. With four years of iteration and proven impact in the Boston region and spurred by the COVID-pandemic and national racial "awakening", the Majira Project went virtual and expanded operations to New York, Chicago, Dallas & Los Angeles, more than tripling the number of companies it was able to impact. It has since only continued to grow, expanding and deepening its impact to startups and small businesses across the nation.
Majira means summer in Swahili. As a nod to the growing season, the Majira Project is designed to cultivate healthy communities by enabling growth for startups and small businesses by providing access to consulting, coaching, connections, and capital for entrepreneurs from or serving Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities.
More Than An Accelerator
In partnership with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the BCGSpark program is built around three of the four C's in the Majira Project's theory of change: consulting, coaching, & connections. Unlike other content-based accelerators, their no fee, no equity, 16-week experience is custom tailored to each company's specific business challenges and needs. Companies accepted into the program are matched with a pro bono consulting team, business coach, and a network of connections all partnering together to tackle the active strategic issues needed to get companies to their next stage of growth. The core component of the program is providing tailored, company-specific consulting from subject matter experts at the Boston Consulting Group who partner with companies to solve the specific business challenges needed for growth.
Learn more about the Majira Project here.