Last week the Seedstars World final took place in Geneva. The South Korean start-up Flitto was selected as winner. The next Seedstars World competition will start in March.
After travelling to 20 different cities to find the best global startups, the SSW team invited its regional winners to a final round of competition to compete for an equity investment of up to $500k. Following the semi-finals which were held at IMD, 5 startups were selected to compete and pitch to 400 participants and the jury members at the Final event.
The five finalists, Kudo, RetailTower, SimplePay, Jayride and Flitto pitched their startups in front of an international and prestigious jury including Anecova’s Martin Velasco, GreentekVentures’s Colin Turner, Bravofly’s Marco Corradino, Passion Capital’s Stefan Glaenzer, EarlyBird VC Hendrik Brandis, Startup Bootcamp’s Wilken Bruns, Seedstars Pierre-Alain Masson and Michael Weber.
The grand winner of the evening was Flitto, who was awarded the first Seedstars trophy and was crowned the “Seedstars World Best Startup 2013”. Flitto’s pitch included a live demo of the product that wowed the audience with its speed and quality. Flitto has over three millions users from 170 countries and with more than 800,000 translators. “Not only did their product prove to be highly scalable and innovative, it already has a huge traction on the global market” said Michael Weber, Seedstars World jury member. Pierre-Alain Masson said of the jury’s decision: “It was difficult to choose between such excellent five finalists. But Flitto amazed us with its combination of market scalability and true innovation. Their language translation app is truly groundbreaking and I look forward to our future collaboration.”
Simon Lee, CEO and Co-Founder of Flitto, talked to us about winning the SSW trophy and what it means to him and his company. “After Seedstars World came to Seoul, and crowned us Regional Winner, doors opened for us and we really gained traction. The publicity it created was also fantastic and this win will take us even further.”
The Public Vote Winner (best startup voted by the guests during the Final Event) was awarded to Totus Power, which provides a battery power pack for schools in emerging markets by reengineering recycled Lithium batteries.
The event was supported by Evasan, U-Start, and the State Department of the Vaud Canton. We also received the support of Lift, Swissnex Singapore, Sandbox, and Galixo, and countless regional partners throughout the SeedstarsWorld Tour.
Seedstars World 2014/2015
Alisee de Tonnac, who had been on the travelling team with Pierre-Alain Masson during the 2013 tour, introduced Julien Berthomier and Nellie Horn as the travel team for Seedstars World 2014/2015. They are very excited to take on the challenges and opportunities of Seedstars World and will be visiting 30 cities in 9 months this year, which include Istanbul, Moscow, Baku, Teheran, Amman, Dubai, Shanghai, Seoul, Tokyo, Bangalore, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh, Manila, Singapore, Jakarta, Sydney, Nairobi, Kampala, Kigali, Lagos, Accra, Dakar, Casablanca, Cape Town, Mexico City, Bogota, Lima, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janerio.
Seedstars World co-founder Alisee de Tonnac stated “Seedstars World will hold its worldwide competition every year and grow exponentially to all the corners of the world and put all the fast growing startup scenes on the map! Indeed the objective of Seedstars World is to create THE network for quality entrepreneurs around the world and help entrepreneurs, accelerators/incubators, co-working spaces and investors to interact with one another. “
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