Over 1000 attendees from 76 nationalities joined in Lausanne, Switzerland to attend one of the hottest startup events on emerging markets.

As the CEO and co-founder of the Seedstars puts it, the mission of this Swiss company is to impact people’s lives in emerging markets through technology and entrepreneurship. Emerging Markets hold 87% of the world’s population and 57% of the world’s GDP. Seedstars has traveled to 65 country in less than a year to find the best seed stage startups by holding a pitch competition. Once per a year Seedstars holds a world summit to bring together all the local winners of all the countries. In a 5 day format with 2 bootcamp days, startups had the chance to get 1-1 mentorships from 46 mentors from all continents. 64 startups were present at Seedstars along with 106 investors. Overall a total of 458 investment meetings were held at the event in a mix and match type of framework for startups to absorb investment on the 4th day of the event.

Another 1 minute pitch competition was held a day before the main and final day to narrow startups down to 12 startups to compete for the final prize of $500,000.

The 12 finalist startups selected were:

TalkBank from Russia
Segmentify from Turkey
Mind Rockets from Jordan
Raye7 from Egypt
Apli from Mexico
Ultra Casas from Bolivia
Edupass from Dominican Republic
LayUp / Creative eLearning (Pvt) from Sri Lanka
Acudeen Technologies from Philippines
uHoo from Hong Kong
Jamii / EdgePoint Digital from Tanzania
Kasha from Rwanda

Acudeen, the 2017 global winner

Acudeen from Philippines took home the prize and glory of the 2017 Seedstars World Summit. Acudeen provides an innovative solution that turns SMEs’ invoices into cash through discounting of their receivables, providing them with necessary working capital not acquirable from the banks. Founder of Acudeen Mario Megallen shares his experience at Seedstars by saying “Seedstars was an incredible experience. Much more than just money, it gives me access to community of a like-minded entrepreneurs with whom I hope I will collaborate to create a bigger impact worldwide.”

Mind Rockets from Jordan also won the public vote contest and was awarded by the Office for Economic Affairs of the State of Vaud in Switzerland.

Iran’s local winner 2nate was also present at the event along with Iranian VC Iratel Ventures and the TechRasa team. 2 mentors from Iran were also present at the bootcamp days.

Seedstars proved to be a great place for everything related to emerging markets from experience sharing, funding and networking. Seedstars is going to start it’s next tour shortly, and it’s next summit will be held around the same time next year in 2018.

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