Seedstars Summit CEE in Nur-Sultan Crowns 8 Startups as Winners in CEE and Central Asia
Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan - November 22nd, 2019 - Seedstars, the leading emerging market startup community and investor, selected
Lingwing.com, Georgia
Biometric, Kazakhstan
iHotel LLC, Mongolia
StudyFree, Russia
FOM, Uzbekistan
Jeff , Latvia
Velvioo, Armenia
Skyworker, Ukraine
Among the most promising startups from CEE and Central Asia in front of over 200 guests. They will represent the region at the Seedstars Summit 2020 in Lausanne, Switzerland and compete for the title of the Seedstars Global Winner, and up to USD 500,000 in equity investment and other prizes.
Seedstars World, the largest seed-stage startup competition for emerging markets and fast-growing startup scenes, has come to its peak during the latest edition of the Seedstars Summit CEE 2019 in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan on November 20th to 22nd. This year Seedstars Summit CEE was organized in partnership with Mayor Office of the City of Nur-Sultan, Astana Innovations. Among the partners were also Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC) FinTech Hub, Swiss Embassy, VAUD, Seedspace Nur-Sultan. Among the local supporters of the Seedstars Summit CEE are Asia Water, Ulker, Pascucci coffee. AIFC Fintech Hub was chosen as a platform for conducting the event. AIFC is the first jurisdiction of English law in the post-Soviet space and creates conditions for market development by providing special visa, tax, work regime and other incentives.
The Seedstars Summit CEE was an opportunity for all stakeholders involved to network and create added value for their impact-driven companies. Prior to the main day, an intensive growth Bootcamp to teach the 19 startups how to scale up their businesses was led by Pierre-Alain Masson (Managing Partner at Seedstars). It was followed up by the Investor Forum where the startups had over 250 one-to-one meetings with top local and international mentors and investors, including Aray Bekembayev (Bolt), Alyona Tkachenko (Nommi), Laetitia Monthe (Phillips Health Systems), Patrick Bosteels (Stage-Co), Joseph De Leon (Gravitas Prime), Arsalan Alfred Ni (AV Ventures), Olexander Bondarev (Credo Ventures), Hambardzum Kaghketsyan (SmartGateVC), Kairat Kaliyev (AIFC) among others.
On Summit Day (November 22nd), the startups delivered 3-minute pitches on the main stage in front of more than 200 hand-picked ecosystem builders, corporates, investors, startup enthusiasts representing some of the most prominent names of tech and entrepreneurship in CEE. The Summit also featured speakers from global companies, business incubators and VC funds Espree Devora, Richard Paul Gauthier of Amazon (USA), Jonas Schorr of Urban Impact (Germany), Ramil Mukhoriapov of ChocoFamily (Kazakhstan), Darya Yegorina of CleverBooks (Ireland), Rudradeb Mitra, of EFMA and Google Developers (Poland).
“This is the coolest event I've been to in terms of people and networking. Seedstars Summit CEE is even better than the accelerator that I visited in the Silicon Valley. Mentors and investors were of the highest category,” - Daria Kroshkina, StudyFree startup, Russia.
“We are so proud to have with us startups from 15 countries with such innovative ideas and contagious energy. This Summit week was the opportunity for them to acquire qualitative knowledge from our dedicated mentors and confront their business models with investors. Months of work leading up to quite an experience, reuniting an international community around the CEE tech scene,” - Eugenia Shevchenko, the Summit Manager.
-ABOUT SEEDSTARS
"They tried to bury us, they didn’t know we were seeds." - Mexican proverb
Seedstars is a Swiss-based private group of companies with a mission to impact people’s lives in emerging markets through technology and entrepreneurship. The groups’ activities cover over 80 emerging ecosystems through a variety of events such as the Seedstars World Competition, acceleration programs, physical hubs called Seedspace, venture capital investments and company building activities.
-ABOUT AIFC FinTech Hub
AIFC FinTech Hub is a meeting point for global startups, entrepreneurs, investors, industry’s top experts and great talent pool. The development of fintech in AIFC includes startup support programs, talent development, local and international partnerships, specially developed rules and a regulator that allow testing products and solutions in the field of fintech. www.aifc.kz, www.fintech.aifc.kz
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Laura Eboa Songue