Ventureburn invited to attend prestigious Seedstars Summit in Switzerland

Ventureburn has been invited to attend the fifth annual Seedstars World Summit — one of the largest emerging markets startup competitions of its kind.

The summit — which will take place at the SwissTech Convention Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland next Thursday (12 April) — will see over 65 startups from around the world (see the list here) compete for the title of Seedstars Global Winner, and up to $1-million in equity investment.

Speaking ahead of the summit Ventureburn editor Stephen Timm, who will fly to Switzerland next week to represent the publication there, said it is notable that of the 65 startups that have been selected to pitch at the summit, 20 — or nearly a third — are from Africa. “The selection is a massive vote of confidence in new innovations coming out of the continent,” he said.

Seedstars said in a statement earlier this week, that the summit represents the finale of a year spent by the organisation roaming the world and analysing startup ecosystems in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, Asia and Africa. The startups are from sectors which include among others fintech, edtech, medtech, agritech and insurtech.

Gwendolyn Regina, who recently spearheaded Mashable’s global expansion into Asia along with AppsTech CEO Rebecca Enonchong are two of the four keynote speakers that have been confirmed for the summit.

Ventureburn editor will fly to Switzerland to attend the Seedstars Summit, one of the largest emerging market competitions of its kind

The others are Tallis Gomes, one of the most outstanding references for entrepreneurship in Latam and Gibran Huzaifah, the Seedstars World Alumni superstar are the other two speakers.

Investors confirmed to attend include Ace & Company, Omidyar Network, Index Ventures and 500startups.

Last year’s summit attracted more than 1000 attendees from all over the world and about 60 startup finalists and 116 investors. Mario Jordan Fetalino III, CEO of Acudeen Technologies, from the Philippines, was crowned as the Seedstars Global winner (pictured above, with award in hands).

Ahead of the summit, over 70 experts from some of the world’s top companies will spend two days (Monday and Tuesday) mentoring the selected entrepreneurs, providing them with in-depth insights and business mentorship.

An investor forum will take place on Wednesday (11 April), where the startups will present their one minute pitches, and attend the one-on-one meetings with Swiss and international investors (curated by Seedstars). The 12 finalists will be announced then.

On Thursday, the main summit day, several workshops will be held in the morning. It will include a workshop hosted by Fedex on the future of ecommerce and another by GSMA on how startups and telecom operators can work together.

In the afternoon, key speakers will take the stage to lead discussions on the future of innovation in emerging markets. The event will then conclude with the announcement of the global winner.

Those startups from Africa that have been selected to attend are:

MyRunner (Zimbabwe) which enables anyone to purchase bus tickets online and track bus location at all times, making the experience safer and more pleasant.
EMGuidance (South Africa) which solves a critical problem for medical professionals by aggregating medical content from regional experts in one app.
Yapili (Botswana) a p2pr web platform and Android App offering new opportunities for many Africans to connect to local and western health professionals in an efficient and confidential way.
Tupuca (Angola) is the first online food delivery platform in Angola.
TABECH Serviços (Mozambique) will present a service named MovelCare, which uses mobile phones without access to the internet to access funeral insurance.
Nefrids Africa (Tanzania) which has developed SimuBima, a mobile phone insurance solution.
Numida (Uganda) issues convenient and unsecured credit to Ugandan small businesses that use its free financial management app.
M-Shule (Kenya) which improves learning for every primary student in Africa using artificial intelligence and SMS to deliver personalized, accessible education.
SolarFreeze (Kenya) is pioneering mobile cold-storage units powered by renewable energy to help rural smallholder African farmers to face the huge challenge of post-harvest loss.
PikiWash (Rwanda) is an eco-friendly, time-saving solution for cleaning motorcycles.
Youdee (DRC) is an easy and trustful way of finding your ideal real estate property.
Medsaf (Nigeria) uses technology to make the process of buying and selling medication easy and efficient for hospitals and pharmacies worldwide.
AgroCenta (Ghana) is an online sales platform that connects smallholder farmers directly to an online market which has wider geographic size, to sell their commodities.
ESenè (Mali) is an on-board system that collects soil moisture to provide water and fertilizer for crops.
Langbot (Ethiopia) is a gamified and AI-powered language teaching chatbot.
Cinetpay (Cote d’Ivoire) is a mobile money payment gateway that enables e-merchants and merchants to accept mobile money and card payments, online or offline.
Gifted Mom (Cameroon) democratises health information access in emerging markets through an AI-based remote medical support platform.
WideBOT (Egypt) is the first bot builder platform in the MENA. WideBOT allows anyone to build his/her own intelligent chatbot without any coding in only 10 minutes.
Hooplacar (Morocco) disrupts the advertising market by letting people wrap their cars with ads, while selling the space to advertisers with a state of the art technology to track the cars and collect major marketing KPIs.
Favizone (Tunisia) has developed a plug & play personalisation solution that enables retailers to deliver recommendations across all channels: e-shop, emails, and messaging app.

Keen to visit the 2018 Seedstars World Summit? Ventureburn readers can receive a 10% discount on entrance tickets. See more here.

Featured image: Seedstars 2017 finalists (Supplied)