Discover the 10 (+26) startups from Seedstars World Competiton

In Fundraising, Startup Scene by Sébastien FluryLeave a Comment

This Wednesday, it wasthe grand final of Seedstars World. Seedstars World is a global competition todiscover promising startups from emerging countries and gathered 36 (!)startups here in Geneva. These startups were the winner of their national Seedstars competition and all had a booth at Lift Conference. 10 of them were selected by the jury to pitch to the whole Lift audience. Here they are:

  1. 6 degrees (Singapore) is a connected, self-updatingphonebook that helps you search your friends’ networks, get introductions to
    new people, shops & businesses.
  2. Busportal (Lima, Peru) is a online tool helping customers to
    find, compare and buy bus tickets in Latin America in a efficient way.
  3. Krowdpop (Seoul, South Korea) is the world’s first concert crowd funding platform
    dedicated to the increasingly popular K-pop music.
  4. OkHi (Nairobi, Kenya) is solving the problem
    of 4 Billion people who don’t have a physical address with short URL made with
    their GPS localization  = a single, global address system.
  5. Ploog
    (Sao Paulo, Brazil) is providing « Desktop as a service »,
    that is simplifying the workstation concept.
  6. Salarium (Hong Kong, China) is an end-to-end payroll solution, that is, a
    modular ERP platform focused on process automation, enabling a mobile
    workforce, and delivering insightful analytics.
  7. Scandid (Bangalore, India): The way Indian shop – a mobile first shopping
    comparison app
  8. SoloLearn (Yerevan, Armenia) wants
    to help people learn how to code through crowd-learning in a fast, fun and effective way
  9. The other guys (Buenos Aires, Argentinia) is a mobile/social
    games studio creating immersive, episodic and story-driven “interactive
    series”, aiming to become « The Netflix of Social Games ».
  10. WashBox24 (Bangkok, Thailand) solves
    the inconvenient hours & locations of traditional laundry stores!

There were 3 differents
prices awarded by Seedstars :

  • Public Award : the audience elected OkHi (so did I !)
  • Innovation Award : Green Energy, which wasn’t in the 10 finalists, which is
    converting municipal solid waste and other organic environmental impedes to liquid petroleum products and electrical energy.
  • Seedstars World Award: Salarium (taking home an equity investment of up to USD 500k (they decide how much they take from the price !)

Quality of presentations were good and I think that there are not only 3 winners. The 10 entrepreneurs who pitched yesterday did a great job, and have shown the audience that
innovation come from everywhere. And have shown us some important problems that
we cannot really see from Europe or from the USA!

On a more personal level, I’ve been attracted especially by three of the presenting startups:

  1. OkHi: because address are always a nightmare and really, who care about the name of the street? What is important is to find your way to your destination (or deliver the package/letter at the right place). And this is possible with GPS data! It sounds simple… but who said that the best ideas have to be complex?
  2. WashBox24: because it’s the kind of problem we do not know here in Switzerland (almost everybody has a direct access to a washing machine in his house/building), and it’s really a time-consuming, painful experience!
  3. SoloLearn: because education should be accessible to everybody, independently of how much money you have. If you can access education for free, but somebody else (aka enterprises, to access the database of talented developer) pays for it. Homerun!

I was also naturally interested by Krowdpop (given the activity of my own startup). It’s definitely a clever business model and Kpop is effectively more and more popular around the world. It was however not that clear to me where they currently stand.

Last but not least, I think that the other 26 startups which have won a Seedstars national competition (and which are still present until Friday 6th in Geneva, at Lift Conference) also deserve to be mentioned (and why not: go talking to them !). Here they are (in alphabetical order):

  1. Aidbits (Ramallah, Palestine)
  2. Beam (Accra, Ghana)
  3. ChannelKit (Moscow, Russia)
  4. eFishery (Jakarta,Indonesia)
  5. Feesheh (Amman, Jordan)
  6. First Job Me (Santiago, Chile)
  7. GoFar (Sydney, Australia)
  8. Green Energy (Lagos, Nigeria)
  9. Ki (Beirut, Lebanon)
  10. KinTrans (Dubai, United Arab Emirates)
  11. Lumkani (Cape Town, South Africa)
  12. Machina Wearable Technology (Mexico City, Mexico)
  13. Manads (Baku, Azerbaijan)
  14. myVLE (Casablanca, Morocco)
  15. Poeyek (Dakar, Senegal)
  16. Prisync (Istanbul, Turkey)
  17. Qsearch (Taipei, Taiwan)
  18. Remit (Kampala, Uganda)
  19. Rumarocket (Shanghai, China)
  20. Spectator (Belgrade, Serbia)
  21. StudyPact (Tokyo, Japan)
  22. TapWay (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
  23. TorQue (Kigali, Rwanda)
  24. Triip (Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam)
  25. Usetime (Bogota, Colombia)
  26. Vdecoration (Tehran, Iran)

Seedstars definitely brought a lot of energy and great entrepreneurial vibes to Lift Conference. Way open to a bigger, more startup-oriented conference next year?