Seedstars Co-CEO Alisée de Tonnac and the winning startups of the FTxSDG Challenge

In a partnership with Seedstars, the Swiss-based private group with a mission to impact people’s lives in emerging markets, and Financial Times, one of the world’s leading business news organizations, the FTxSDG Challenge was created to empower promising, impact-driven startups and entrepreneurs with learning and funding opportunities. The competition was also made possible with the School of Management Fribourg (HEG-FR).

The focus on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aims to bring awareness to global problems, while also empowering entrepreneurs who are creating solutions that can address these issues.

Behind the scenes in the Financial Times Studio

Since 2013, the Seedstars World Competition has grown to be the largest startup competition in emerging markets, but the pandemic has led to the online adaptation of the competition for the past two years.

Opening the FTxSDG Challenge call for applications to all startups and innovative entrepreneurs around the globe, over 4,500 applications were received. Narrowing that down, the Seedstars and Financial Times team have selected 30 finalists to compete for the six global winners spots for each SDG. The full list of finalists can be found here.

From there, the startup finalists got to pitch their ideas to experts in their respective SDG categories. You can view the full list of the jury members here. The results of the deliberations for this year’s global winners are the following:

• Quality Education Winner

Anthem, India - Anthem is a simple, but very powerful SaaS tool built to keep the needs of mid-sized educational institutions in mind. It helps automate their four fundamental functions – fee collection, expense management, admissions, and communication.

• Reduced Inequalities Winner

Duhqa, Kenya - For a small shop selling consumer products, they struggle to get a one-stop shop for their procurement needs, financing, and logistics. Duhqa is solving this problem and provides a tech solution that enables them to shop from manufacturers, get financing, and have all items delivered to their shop in under 6 hours.

• Good Health & Wellbeing Winner

Medl, Trinidad and Tobago - There are millions of premature deaths by non-communicable diseases. Most premature deaths can be avoided by medications but 1 in 2 prescriptions are never filled: medication is confusing, time-consuming, inaccessible, and expensive. Medl's end-to-end prescription platform, to-your-door delivery, and continuing patient management scraps the traditional pharmacy model to transform the patient experience for the $75bn LatAm pharmaceutical market.

• Gender Equality Winner
  Pinky Promise, India - Pinky Promise provides high-quality, automated reproductive healthcare to every woman in the world. Their gynecologist-verified chatbot walks a woman from her symptom, all the way to an answer for that symptom. Issue-specific chatrooms on our app help women connect with each other anonymously so they can ask follow-up questions and find support.
• Good Jobs & Economic Growth Winner

Trii, Columbia - Local brokers make it difficult for 99% of the population to access the stock market and small investors were banned from the game. Trii is a Colombian Fintech partnered with the Colombian Stock Exchange to develop the first trading app in the country. They can serve millions and make the local stock market accessible and empower small investors.

• Climate Action Winner

SafEarth Clean Technologies, India - Renewable energy is today the cheapest source of energy around the world, yet 9 out of 10 people don’t end up making this decision. As well as 67% of all distributed solar plants are not able to meet basic quality checks. From the end-user perspective, the transition to renewable energy is very complicated and prone to errors. Safearth helps in getting these users the right solar plants at the lowest possible price with zero errors.

Head of Business Development & FT Talent Director Virginia Stagni (left) and Seedstars Co-CEO Alisée de Tonnac (right) announce the winners of the FTxSDG Challenge

Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Seedstars Alisée de Tonnac shared, “We’ve been doing these competitions for years now but I am always in awe of the vision and impact that the startups are making. I’m proud to announce this year’s winners who are helping push forward progress in the different sustainable development goals.”

Financial Times Business Development Associate​​ Noor Hafez also expressed excitement for the winners, “We're so delighted with how well the FTxSDG challenge has gone! This first collaboration with Seedstars allowed us to reach so many people around the world and open up our challenge to startups for the first time ever. We were also able to focus our challenge on just emerging markets for the first time. We heard so many insightful and innovative ideas in the space of 5 days.”

The FTxSDG Challenge finale included public sessions “SDGs in emerging markets: can entrepreneurship be the solution?” with Seedstars Co-CEOs Alisée de Tonnac and Pierre-Alain Masson and Head of Business Development & FT Talent Director Virginia Stagni as well as the live session on “Race for Tomorrow: the global fight to respond to climate change” with Financial Times Moral Money Editor, Simon Mundy.

To rewatch the finale, visit https://ftxchallenge.com/ftxseedstars-old/agenda.

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ABOUT SEEDSTARS

Seedstars is a Swiss-based private group with a mission to impact people’s lives in emerging markets through technology and entrepreneurship. The group’s activities cover over 90 emerging entrepreneurial ecosystems through a variety of initiatives such as the FTxSDG Challenge, previously known as the Seedstars World Competition, which is the largest entrepreneurship competition in emerging markets; Seedstars International, a global venture capital fund for seed stage startups, Seedstars Programs that are designed to support entrepreneurs in varying stages of growth via training, education, mentoring, and access to resources; Seedstars 01, a talent incubator providing digital skills and startup-based immersive education for the next generation of changemakers and Seedspace, physical coworking spaces and hubs located in 15 countries. For more information, visit www.seedstars.com.

"They tried to bury us, they didn’t know we were seeds." - Mexican proverb

ABOUT FT TALENT

The FT Talent Challenge is a series of international events. FT Talent selects the most innovative and diverse individuals from thousands of international applicants for a multiple-day challenge experience, giving them a chance to understand and challenge the existing ecosystem and benefit from FT and partner expert insights alongside invited guests. The challenge helps foster new creative thinking, develop potential solutions to strategic business issues and stimulate disruption within the business ecosystem.

ABOUT FINANCIAL TIMES

The Financial Times is one of the world’s leading business news organisations, recognised internationally for its authority, integrity and accuracy. The FT has a record paying readership of more than one million, three-quarters of which are digital subscriptions. It is part of Nikkei Inc., which provides a broad range of information, news and services for the global business community.

CONTACT

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