Seedstars Cairo concludes competition, winning startups revealed
Seedstars World hosted its Cairo round at its Seedspace Hub where 8 budding startups presented their companies in front of a local jury.
Seedstars World is known as the largest seed-stage startup competition in emerging markets. The competition focused on encouraging businesses to find sustainable solutions in their respective fields.
On Day 1 the startups were carefully screened and were provided training. The top 8 startups who were shortlisted pitched their ideas for an opportunity to compete at the Seedstars Summit.
Seedstar Summit is an annual competition that takes place in Switzerland and the selected startups compete to win up to $500,000 worth of prizes, which includes equity investments.
A healthcare platform called Hospitalia won the 1st place at the competition. The aim of this startup is to provide access to medical facilities any time at home. The 2nd place was won by RafiQ, an Android based virtual assistant that understands Arabic voice commands and can differentiate between different dialects to provide a customized user experience. HOVO, an app for ordering trucks, came at 3rd place. The other finalists of the competition included: Ship’nbag, ACT Microschools, Curotrip, Bokdoc and Mowafer Care.
Adrian Hauri, Councellor at the Embassy of Switzerland was present at the event as the Switzerland Embassy was one of the main partners of the competition. During his keynote he said, “The Embassy works together with Egypt to increase the resilience of the economy, creating more and better jobs through a more competitive private sector. We support Seedstars Cairo as we share the believe that a dynamic start up scene can contribute to those goals and improve the business environment in Egypt.”
The Venture Capital Analyst at Seedstars Francesca Bombassei spoke about working with the local ecosystem and trying to be a medium of change. He said, “We have worked closely with the local ecosystem and its enablers to select the most promising early stage tech startups. We were amazed by the diversity of the startups applications we have received and delighted by the ambition of the entrepreneurs who pitched.”
The jury members of the competition were as follows: Ziad Mokhtar from Algebra Ventures, Omar Barakat from BECO Capital, Francesca Bombassei from Seedstars World, Amr Mostafa from Endeavor Egypt and Dina el-Shenoufy from Flat6Labs Cairo.