After a nearly six month battle, five startups will take home $10,000 each in funding at the PIVOT East finalists conference slated on the 24th and 25th June at the Panari Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya.
The five will be selected from 25 finalists who will pitch to investors, media and industry stakeholders and will be announced on the afternoon of 25th June in a cocktail award ceremony. There are five categories of which one great startup will be selected. Each category winner will be determined by a panel of investor judges based on a criteria published earlier this year.
Since 2011, m:lab East Africa has organized annual editions of PIVOT East, an annual pitching conference for startups with mobile technology based businesses where 15 startups have raised close to US$120,000.
Just like last year’s edition, the funding will be split into two halves, the first of which is a $5,000 grant. The other portion $5,000 will be an investment which may be topped up by other investors depending on the startups funding requirements and their ability to convince other investors.
75 startups have participated in the annual competition so far. These previous finalists have so far raised over $5m in investments directly or indirectly as a benefit of going through the PIVOT East competition. The 25 startups who will be pitching at the finalists conference were selected from a pool of 50 semi-finalists. The list of finalists comprises 1 startup from Ethiopia, 1 from Tanzania, 5 from Uganda and 18 from Kenya. Startups from the larger East African region including Rwanda , Burundi and South Sudan were eligible for the competition.
