South African startup Giraffe is the Seedstars World 2015 Global Winner
Grand Winner Giraffe was awarded the Seedstars trophy and was crowned the “Seedstars World Global Winner 2015” for their innovative solution to reduce unemployment in the emerging markets. The Giraffe platform optimizes the matching of recruiters and job candidates by guaranteeing a two-day turnaround on staffing requests and automating scheduling and CVs in the interview process.
Co-founder and Head of Product Shafin Anwarsha talked to us about winning the prize and what it means to his company. “Since the beginning, we have been creating this product with the aim of improving people’s lives and making it easier for them to find sustainable jobs. Our solution is not limited just to one country, and this investment is going to enable us to scale fast into other countries in the region.”
Nine of the most promising startups selected by the Seedstars World team’s regional managers presented their products at the Seedstars Summit on March 3 in Lausanne, Switzerland. Following a two day bootcamp and an investor forum, a panel of investors, the semifinalists included Eora 3D from Australia, Bitnexo from China, Giraffe from South Africa, Asoriba from Ghana, Evreka from Turkey, EasyCarros from Brazil, Slidebean from Costarica, Yakut from Jordan and Omniup from Morocco.
Altogether 6 startups were awarded special prizes. lastminute.com group selected Tripmydream from Ukraine as the best travel startup, with its online destination meta search that finds, analyzes and dynamically packages flight and hotel offers. The company will receive investment of up to USD 500'000 from lastminute.com group and leverage the group’s invaluable know-how. “Being immersed in the flourishing environment of talents in the worldwide startup scene over the past year has been very inspiring for us as a business and our ambition is to keep this kind of entrepreneurial spirit. One passion of lastminute.com group is to stay lean and innovative. This is where the vision came from to launch this bold partnership with Seedstars World to find the best travel startup from emerging markets,” said Fabio Cannavale, the CEO of lastminute.com group.
The audience was asked to choose their favorite startup for the Public Vote award, which was presented by the the Minister of Economy and Sport, Mr Philippe Leuba, of Canton de Vaud, and went to Slidebean from Costarica, a web-based presentation platform that lets users input their content, and automatically formats it into a finished deck. Inmarsat and AP-SWISS awarded 50K equity-free grant to MapTasking from Panama as the Top Space Startup, for their platform that enables sending tasks to remote employees and track their progress. The prize for the Most Innovative Startup went to Eora 3D from Australia, 3D scanning and modelling powered by a smartphone while the Top Woman Entrepreneur prize was awarded to OmniUp from Morocco, free wi-fi service in public places against geo-located video ads. Both of the prizes were awarded by Hublot, the official timekeeper of Seedstars Summit.
