Nigeria’s representatives at the Global Seedstars Competition may have put up their best efforts, but Blended, the leading school platform in Latin America, has emerged winner at one of the biggest technology startup competitions focusing on emerging markets and fast-growing startup scenes. Blended, which improves communication between schools and families with a simple technology, came tops at the sixth edition of the Global Seedstars Summit, held in Lausanne, Switzerland. For the feat, Federico Hernandez, CFO & Founder of Blended clinched the $500,000 in equity investment prize dedicated to emerging economies’ startups.
In addition to the $500,000 investment prize for the Seedstars Global Winner, Seedstars and its partners awarded seven additional prizes, including one clinched by Nigeria’s Medsaf:
- Public Prize by Vaud: SPEI allowed the Summit attendees to vote for the best tech start-ups among the Seedstars Global Competition winners. YNMO from Saudi Arabia is a SaaS that allows disabilities service providers including schools, centers & clinics to design and monitor individualized treatment plans.
- Labeskey / Schoolap, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, won the Transforming Education Prize by TRECC and the School of Management Fribourg, winning access to the Seedstars Growth Program worth $50,000. The online platform provides tools to improve the education system with school administration management modules.
- TAG Heuer, Seedstars World official timekeeper, partnered with Seedstars Summit to reward the Innovation Prize to Wobot. The Indian startup allows companies to automate their surveillance systems with Artificial Intelligence.
- Seedstars Vaccine Delivery Challenge was awarded to the South African startup Iyeza, by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. $10,000 will be provided to improve their web platform for the delivery of Human PapillomaVirus (HPV) vaccine to young women.
- Also with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Seedstars Malaria Challenge was awarded to Medsaf, through their platform, the Nigerian startup connects pharmacies and hospitals with safe and cost-effective medication.
- Along with Seedstars, Merck awarded the Life Science Prize to Oxpecker Labs from Hong Kong. They will participate in the Merck Acceleration program and scale up their non-invasive sweat sensor to help prevent dehydration and heat strokes.
- 7keema, the first on-demand home nursing services of its kind from Egypt, won the Rising Tide Foundation Empowerment Prize. They won access to the Seedstars Growth Program as well as an equity investment.
According to Pierre-Alain Masson co-founder at Seedstars, “We are very proud to be supporting all these entrepreneurs and we’ll continue to expand our activities with the launch of new acceleration and training programs across the world. We’ll also be announcing more funding to these unbelievable entrepreneurs that we have seen on stage all week.”
CALEB OJEWALE
