Famous startup competition Seedstars World is coming to Soweto. The pre-selection event will be held at eKasi Labs in DiepKloof, Soweto, on 14 June. By Staff Writer
Seedstars is a Switzerland based startup competition that takes place in emergings markets. Its vision is to reduce unemployment in emerging markets through the promostion and investment in entrepreneurship.
This year, Seedstars world is back to South Africa with a bigger event that will find the best startups from Capetown, Durban and Gauteng.
In its Gauteng pre-selection event, Startups will be invited to pitch in Soweto for the pre-selection. Out of the 12 startups that will be invited, 3 will advance to the grand finale in Johannesburg.
“The winning startup will join the global Seedstars Family and take part in the regional and global Seedstars Summits that include our tried and tested bootcamp and investor forum,”Seedstars said on its blog post.
“It’s a catalytic platform for high growth emerging market startups.”
In addition to seeing the top startups pitch, Seedstars said “you can look forward to an event filled with disruptive tech, inspirational discussions, networking sessions and one flight ticket for the winner to come to Switzerland to compete for over $1 million (R14.7 million) in investment.”
The startups selected for the Soweto pre-selection event includes:
- Zulu Afrika – public transport service
- UmoyAir – provider of free calls from mobile phones to any number without airtime or data
- Sortd – the world’s first Communication-Centric Organizer that transforms Email & IM (Gmail, Slack …) into a set of organized To-Do lists
- Riovic – Digital and P2P insurance backed by crowdfunded reinsurance.
- Masokko – the 1st Africa centric B2B e-marketplace driven to help SMEs in agri, food and beverages to sell their goods to export markets
- GEM – a mobile payment platform to reward social action. Following which it will offer financial services to the unbanked RSA pop
- BOTTLES – The Alcohol Delivery App. Alcohol delivered to your door in under 60 minutes. You/re welcome. Need drinks? Get BOTTLES!
- Black Industrialists – an app which channels ED funds to smallholder farmers through monitoring, evaluation & reporting before access to markets
In South Africa, Seedstars partners with Stardard Bank and Entrepreneur Tracstion to bring the worldwide startup event into country.
