Seedstars World is a Switzerland based startup competition that takes place in emerging markets. As it has been quite obvious, Kenya has been involved in almost every startup competition that you could possibly imagine. As the seedstar competition began 65+ countries were identified and were given adequate training and finally given the opportunity to compete in the seedstars Summit where one would be crowned seedstars world Global winner. A Kenyan startup will never fail to make us proud as local firm InukaPap emerged as the best in Kenya during the local round of seedstars world startup competition for emerging markets.
InukaPap is a mobile platform that allows users to access free medical insurance by saving and borrowing loans. The startup is meant to target people who have a problem accessing insurance or medical services. The InukaPap winners are set to travel to Switzerland for a week. During their time there, the representatives are expected to be part of a training program in April 2017. In the final day of the summit, the entrepreneurs will get an opportunity to pitch their idea and the chosen startup will receive$1 million, which is equivalent to 101 Kenya Shillings. At a time where African markets continue to emerge, it is apparent that Kenyan entrepreneurs are not lagging behind as they continue to take every chance to become great.
Apart from InukaPap, a construction company emerged as the first runners-up of the competition. The mobile construction company is meant to de-mechanize road maintenance by mobilizing local labor to manually build climate resilient dirt roads. The top third position was taken by Ujuzi Software Solutions, a startup that provides Anti-money Laundering (AML) solutions for all markets including banks and bureaus in an attempt to fight money laundering in Africa.
The finalists pitched to a panel consisting of Neil Edward Wood the project leader at Open Capital Advisors, Jeff Alondo a senior Manager at CFC Stanbic Bank, Tonya Nyakeya (above) co-founder SuperFluid Labs, Nemo Semret CTO at Gro intelligence and Marcello Schermer the general manager for Africa at Seedstars World.Seedstars World is set to visit Dakar’s Jokkolabs in search for the best start-up in Senegal. Seedstars is a swiss based group of companies which aims at impacting people’s lives especially in the emerging markets through technology and entrepreneurship.The Seedstars group includes Seedstars World, Seedstars growth which entails a four month virtual program that accelerates stratups within Seedstars network, Seedspace a network of co-working spaces and Seedstars Academy that conducts six months long training programme for entrepreneurs running in Nigeria only.
