The Seedstars Summit, organized by the Seedstars World, aims to promote and to support entrepreneurs from emerging countries. More than 50 startups have been invited to come to Lausanne, Switzerland in April 2017 to present their mission and to compete for the amazing prices delivered by the Seedstars World organization. They come from all over the world, from Latin America (LatAm), to Middle-East and Northern Africa (MENA), Asia, Africa and Central & Eastern Europe (CEE). The CEE start-ups benefit from a great ecosystem. This zone gathers a population of 300 million inhabitants, with an Internet penetration of 70,1% in 2016 and an average GDP growth of 2.9% per year (source: OECD). For the 2017 Seedstars Summit, 10 CEE startups have been nominated to represent their country;
Kundi from Poland, MindPax from Czech Republic, Glash from Ukraine, Fentury from Moldova, Segmentify from Turkey, Treepex from Georgia, Earlyone from Armenia, Kvotter from Azerbaijan, Smart Satu from Kazakhstan and Talkbank from Russia.
Regarding the Seedstars Summit Index (SSI), among the cities represented by the 10 CEE firms in Lausanne, it’s Warsaw, Moscow and Istanbul the best to support startups. This index aims to objectify a city’s attractivity for innovative entrepreneurs through three pillars; culture, environment and opportunity. Concerning the other regions represented at the Summit, CEE ecosystems have the highest SSI of all regional averages!
Besides their geological emplacement and their attractive ecosystem, you might think these CEE startups have nothing more in common. But all of them have this amazing entrepreneurial mindset which thrilled the 2017 Seedstars Summit attendees. Two of them even had the opportunity to go on stage to pitch during five minutes to the whole Seedstars community in the main auditorium :
- First, the Russian Fintech Start-up Talkbank developed through the Messenger app an amazing banking system. They observed people does not understood well virtual money; cash is easier but for Talkbank it lacks of opportunities. However, their bot allows now to pay, to transfer and to split bills, and giving also financial advice. Supported by PwC and Microsoft, Talkbank will certainly expand in the next months. They already benefit from a great implication of their customers. In average, they have 57 transactions per user per month, which is fantastic.
- Then, the Turkish Startup Segmentify, presented on-stage by its cofounder Murat Soysal, made an amazing impression to the audience. Based in Istanbul, they offer to online retailers to better know their customers, to increase their conversion rate and their profitability through better personalized recommendations.
Finally, the 8 other start-ups present at the Seedstars Summit 2017 in Lausanne offer great opportunities for daily-life and other tough issues;
- Kundi is a Peer-to-peer mobile insurance for portable possessions coming from Warsaw, Poland. They consider that insurance is too expensive and has too high entry barrier (paperwork, contact with advisor needed). Hence they decided to create a peer-to-peer insurance with cashback for no claims which makes insurance up to 50% cheaper.
- MindPax is a Health tech company coming from Prague, Czech which built a platform for mental Health services. 2% of citizens in developed countries suffer from bipolar and schizophrenia disorder and this startup wants to give power to bipolar and schizophrenia patients and their doctors to manage their diagnosis and prevent the relapses
- Glash built the first video-stabilization technology running on GoPro and Smartphones. Glash is based in Odessa, Ukraine.
- Fentury is a Fintech startup. They aggregate all your bank accounts, e-wallets and shows you where do you stand now and how can you improve your financial wellness and they’re based in Chisinau, Moldova.
- Treepex is based in Tbilisi, Georgia. It’s a Green Loyalty Program. If you want to buy products with a Treepex logo, then a tree will be planted in your name.
- Earlyone comes from Yerevan, Armenia. They found out that uncontrolled flow and staff of service centers leads to a loss of money, customers and time. Hence they decided to build a solution to manage the flow and to evaluate staff performance. They mobile app aims to save customers’ time through booking beforehand their place in queue.
- Kvotter (Azerbaijan — Baku). What do we do when we read a book, article or magazine and want to save or share an interesting Quote? Kvotter decided to tackle this issue! For this reason, they created a mobile app that lets you photoscan and share quotes from any source.
- Smart Satu is based in Almaty, Kazakhstan. It is an online ordering platform for shops & suppliers with features for order sending, inventory management & analytics.
by François Magnin — Article written for We_Start
