I took a left, it took a left, and my right was met by a pause from the big-eyed digital waitress who left a…
4 killer emerging market startups emerge from MEF innovation awards
MEF, the global community for mobile content and commerce, recently held a startup battle in Miami that saw North and Latin American companies go head to head for top honours.
Although a US-based CMS startup, GENWI, walked away as overall winner, the innovation competition recognised some interesting ventures from emerging markets such as Brazil, Mexico and Chile.
The competition was open to mobile content and commerce startups actively innovating in the North America and Latin America regions.
MEF presented its first innovation award during the third annual MEF event held in Miami. The MEF Americas 2012 Award for Mobile Innovation, in association with Red Herring, saw the shortlisted start-ups pitch their products and services in a live final called Battle of the Start-Ups.
The Mobile Innovation Award is part of a new series of innovation awards for MEF, the first of which took place in London in September as part of the annual Meffys, the global awards for mobile content and commerce.
VideoVivo is a type of community marketplace where professionals can list, discover, and book knowledge work over live video. Think Freelancer or 99designs with video.
For people who would like to launch a mobile app, but do not possess the technical know-how to do so, Universo.mobi might be an interesting proposition. The startup allows the creation of apps without programming knowledge. The apps are simple feed aggregators, taking in content from existing services like Flickr and Twitter.
The startup developed a system for handling parking related tasks from a mobile phone. Parking payment, enforcement and monitoring tasks are all taken online. Users can even receive notifications before their parking time allotment runs out.
Cuiker is a social network that helps people discover the best of the city and share it with friends. It for example, provides locally relevant news and shopping promotions.
