South Africa’s Daptio, Ekaya, GoMetro, Mzansi Store, NerveData, Shopstar, Snapplify and Wumdrop will on the 22nd of July 2014 in Cape Town pitch at the Get in The Ring (GITR) startup competion with hopes of heading to the finals to raise R15 000 000 OR € 1 000 000 globally in investments.
Part of the Global Entrepreneurship franchise, which hosts an annual Global Entrepreneurship Week in November annually, GITR is hosted in partnership with Silicon Cape and bhive Enterprise Development Center (bhive EDC).
Dubbed as the ‘Olympics’ for start-ups the inaugural event originally initiated in 2009 in Rotterdam, by the Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship brings together promising entrepreneurs, investors, clients and would-be business partners and is currently the largest investment competition in the world.
GITR– Cape Townian start-ups will compete in the Regional Final for one spot in the International Final of Get in the Ring Regional Final for Africa on the 25th of September in Rwanda then the winner of the African Regional final will join other regional winners in Rotterdam, on the 21st of November with 7 other finalists competing for investment funding up to € 1 000 000 / R 15 000 000.
The startups showcase their team, achievements, business Model & Market and then Financials & Investment Proposition plus a“Freestyle pitch” to impress the four Champion investors who will be judges.
According to Nicholas Haralambous founder of NicSocks.com in a statement,“There is a trend towards pitching competitions at the moment and the uniqueness about “Get in The Ring” is the competitiveness and freestyle nature that allows startups the opportunity to showcase their startup, nationally, regionally and globally.With an amount of R15 000 000 in possible investment is a large pricetag that is attractive to any startup that wants to scale.”
The judging panel includes Rob Stokes from Quirk Agency, Pieter de Villiers from Clickatell, Octavius Phukubye from SABKickstart and Fredell Jacobs from Innovation Hub will be judging the Cape Town leg of the event and adding their insights from their own personal entrepreneurial journeys.
There will be great prizes for the winner of the Get in The Ring, the main prize is fully paid for flights sponsored by Microsoft BizPark to the Regionals in Rwanda and Rotterdam for the final. Additional prizes of Sponsored are office space by Daddy.O, weekend-aways by Daddy’s World Group, free signups from Microsoft ,My Vigo and U-Start as well as Press and PR for the participating startups.
“The Daddy’s World group, of which Daddy.O is a part, is driven by entrepreneurial spirit – and strongly believe that the future of Africa depends on the successful development of more entrepreneurial ventures. The spirit of co-operation has been a guiding ethos behind the Daddy brand and a crucial aspect to all their business ventures. This is best expressed in their commitment to collaboration with the creative industries. It is for this reason that we are supporting the Get in the Ring competition because it so perfectly expresses what we believe: Business should be both profitable and fun!” said by George Gabriel from Daddy.O.