It took the world over 100 years to get to a billion telephone users, but less than 10 years to get to a billion smartphone users.
When asked why she believes in Technology, Seedstars World CEO, Alisee de Tonnac said, “technology elevates the lives of those who had no chance of accessing the basic human needs and does this at an unprecedented speed. It provides access to education, health, jobs, and endless opportunities that can elevate these people’s lives, and those of their families and communities.”
The just concluded Seedstars World Summit brought together more than 800 attendees at the Summit, 63 startups from 54 countries, over 50 journalists from media like Forbes, Wamda, Entrepreneur Middle East, CNBC Africa, La Liberte and L’Atelier conducting more than 200 interviews with the startups, speakers, partners and our team, 130 individual mentorship sessions, over 250 investor meetings and up to USD 1,000,000 invested.
A 3rd edition of the Seedstars World tour that began about a year ago for these budding entrepreneurs was concluded this week in Geneva, Switzerland with two days of boot camp consisting of mentoring sessions on business models and financial sustainability, Pitching sessions before a audience of investors from all over the world across the Tech industry and an awards ceremony to the most promising startups seen in 2015.
Shafin Anwarsha, CEO of South Africa’s startup “Giraffe” was awarded Global Winner of the competition for innovative solution to reduce unemployment in the emerging markets. A prize to the tune of $500,000 in investment. The Giraffe platform guarantees a two-day turnaround on staffing requests and automating scheduling and CVs in the interview process to optimize the matching of recruiters to respective job candidates. The $50,000 Space Prize went to Panama-based startup MapTasking, for their service, which allows remote employers to track all of their field personnel in real time. Other winners of the night were;
- Seedstars World Global Winner: Giraffe (South Africa)
- Best Travel Startup: TripMyDream (Ukraine)
- Best Space Startup: MapTasking (Panama)
- Most Innovative Startup: Eora 3D (Australia)
- Best Woman Entrepreneur: Loan Duong, founder of Omniup (Morocco)
- Public Vote Award: Slidebean (Costa Rica)
“I’m inspired by the number of female entrepreneurs and African entrepreneurs who are taking on big problems like education and logistics,” said Wempy Dyocta Koto, a mentor and investor in Seedstars World.
As we continue to celebrate the big and small successes and steps taken in using technology to better our livelihoods, we also watch closely for Africa’s next big Idea?
