The Seedstars Summit took place from the 3rd – 6th of April, 2017. The whole programme took place in Lausanne, Switzerland. The event had the following activities:
- Seedstars Bootcamp, Monday & Tuesday, April 3rd – 4th,
- Investor Forum & Semifinals, Wednesday, April 5th,
- THE Summit – Final, Thursday, April 6th,
The theme of the Summit this year was Billions. The idea is to discuss how technology and entrepreneurship can impact billions of people’s lives.
After two days of intense bootcamps to deliver sixty one-minute pitches to a room full of investors, 12 finalists emerged.
After the competition, these are the winners:
SEEDSTARS WORLD SUMMIT PRIZE: Acudeen Technologies Inc from the Philippines
The Filipino startup, founded by Mario Jordan “Magellan” Fetalino III, was awarded the Seedstars trophy on stage by Pierre-Alain Masson, Co-founder at Seedstars Group and crowned the “Seedstars World Global Winner 2017” for their innovative solution that turns SMEs invoices into cash through discounting of their receivables, providing them with necessary working capital they are not getting from the banks. Magellan will receive up to USD 500’000 in equity investment.
TRANSFORMING EDUCATION PRIZE: Asafeer Education Technologies, from UAE
Asafeer Education Technologies from UAE was awarded the TRECC Transforming Education Prize, a grant of USD 50’000, presented by TRECC.
Asafeer Education Technologies is a smarter, more efficient way to learn & to read for school children. The Asafeer platform adopts the latest research and studies in the field of teaching Arabic language to combine creative content for distinguished children and useful resources to help teachers get their students to succed. The platform offers a diverse content and multiple levels of books accompanied by adequate quantity of activities.
Asafeer is now working with several schools in the Arab world, to build a habit of reading among students, and to measure their progress.
FINTECH PRIZE: UnDosTres, from Mexico
UnDosTres from Mexico was awarded the Fintech Prize, presented by PayU ,with full access to the Seedstars Growth program and five tickets to a Silicon Valley fintech tour.
Undostres is the leading Mexican website for recharge air time, TAG and buy tickets online.
It’s a mobile wallet, offering mobile top-ups and rewards that allows to create a digital wallet that is adopted universally, quickly.
qAIRa from Peru was awarded the prize for Best Woman Entrepreneur, presented by Hublot.
qAIRa: Know your air, become the change, is a startup acting against the global problem of pollution, by monitoring the quality of air continuously at anytime and anywhere.
Air is our planet’s most valuable resource, but it is nowadays being threatened by the high levels of contamination which cause, besides global warming, 1 in 10 deaths globally each year: qAIRa team works towards achieving the democratization of air quality to tackle this silent problem.
MOST INNOVATIVE STARTUP: PiQuant from South Korea
PiQuant from South Korea was awarded the prize for Most Innovative Startup, presented by Hublot.
PiQuant’s spectroscopy technology is designed to save people from eating and drinking toxic chemicals.
Their product is designed to address growing concern around food safety by developing an easy to use inexpensive hand held device that can detect toxic chemicals.
PUBLIC VOTE: Mind Rockets from Jordan
Mind Rockets from Jordan was awarded the Public Vote.
Mind Rockets develops assistive technologies for the deaf and hard of hearing community around the world, using avatars to deliver instant translations from text and speech to sign language.
They improve communications and make interactions easier with the Deaf community and Enable the integration and independence of the Deaf into society and allow them access to public/private sectors’ services.
