Seedstars World is coming to the Land of a Thousand Hills to find the best Rwandan startup

Seedstars World (SSW) will make its return in Rwanda on the 19th of June 2014, continuing on its journey to emerging markets and fast-growing startup scenes.

Seedstars World is the most exclusive startup competition for emerging markets and fast-growing startup scenes. Based in Geneva, Switzerland and founded by Alisee de Tonnac and Pierre-Alain Masson, it is supported by the venture builder Seedstars SA.

2013’s tour of 20 cities ended with a final round in Geneva, where the most promising startups from all over the world competed one last time in front of an international jury to earn the final grand prize, up to USD 500’000 in equity investment. Aphrodice Mutangana won Seedstars Kigali 2013 with his mobile health startup Foyo and remarked that: “before being crowned as Regional Winner by Seedstars World in Kigali, many people either misunderstood what FOYO m-health was about or simply ignored its existence. However, the application has now received exposure not only in Rwanda but also internationally.”

The quality of the startups of 2013’s 20 cities was impressive and participants, partners, and investors encouraged the team to explore other ecosystems as well, thus 10 new cities were added. More than 600 entrepreneurs from two thousand applications will be selected for the 30 pitching events in 2014. The new round will also incorporate old friends, as former SSW regional winners continue to be part of the journey to help the company reach even more startups in their respective ecosystems.

Alisee de Tonnac, CEO, stated that “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, our goal 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.” The network aims to spread the Seedstars spark, which accelerated the regional winning startups’ progress by tripling their funding on average during the first edition in 2013. This currently amounts to a total of 6 million USD of follow-up funding.

After a successful event in Rwanda in 2013, Seedstars World is coming to Kigali for its 11th event of the 2014 tour. This year, SSW will partner with the kLab, where the event will be hosted. The event is free to join and more information can be found on the Seedstars Kigali page. Payment solutions provider Ingenico, which is partnering with Seedstars for the African continent, will provide the flight ticket for the winning startup to Geneva.