The Seedstars Douala Competition served as the Cameroonian leg of the global early-stage startups competition for emerging markets.
The competition took place at the end of September, with 11 of the best startups vying to be the representative from Cameroon for the global final event next year.
Seedstars World, which describes itself as the world’s biggest startup competition in emerging markets, holds these events in over 65 countries before winners are selected to take part in a grand final.
The winner of the Seedstars Douala Competition will now join other Seedstars country-winners at the final event in Switzerland during April next year, where it will deliver a pitch that could potentially earn the company up to $1 million in equity investments and prizes.
Here are the 11 tech startup finalists that were in consideration for the Seedstars Douala Competition.
Sources: Seedstars, Ventureburn, Outrepreneurs, VC4A.
This web and mobile application links health professionals and the people in the communities who are in need of care, improving communication between doctors and their patients. The startup also promotes preventive medicine as a means to help communities to become healthier.
This communication platform, which is capable of working both on and offline, is aimed at businesses and allows users to create websites, access databases, and network through text messaging in order to grow their businesses.
Cloomify is a search engine startup that is focused on helping people to find out more about their surroundings. The city guide mobile application works even when the user does not have an internet connection.
Building on a trend that is being seen across the world, Drone Africa aims to develop intelligent drones that will reduce mapping costs and improve security in Africa, touching on two of the many ways in which drones are positively impacting industries across the continent.
E-health startup GiftedMom was the winner of Seedstars Douala. The medical support platform develops last-mile mobile health solutions geared at increasing maternal engagement in emerging markets through an artificial intelligence-based remote medical platform.
Guanxi Investment is a crowdfunding platform that is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs across Africa to find investors that will enable them to get their projects off the ground. By being visible online, these entrepreneurs are able to raise funds for their business activities.
iDjangui is a fintech startup that is aiming to bring traditional finance and modern financial institutions in Africa together, as there is little information for banks to use on the unbanked population, but this startup has a solution to change that.
MyExpressTicket has developed an intra-urban real-time bus booking platform, allowing users to get their bus tickets online in the most convenient way, enabling more efficient public transport transactions.
At a time when food delivery services around the globe, such as Delivery Hero and Mr Delivery, seem to be a popular trend, Cameroon is ensuring that it doesn’t miss out with its own version. Ratagrab is a digital fast food delivery platform in Cameroon.
VIKI is an artificial intelligence-based virtual sales assistant which generates leads from social media and automates engagement. Developed with business in mind, VIKI uses social media such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to generate leads, and the startup came third in the Seedstars Douala competition.
Agritech startup Save Our Agriculture came second in the Seedstars Douala competition. The startup combines fish farming with hydroponics to find solutions to logistics problems faced by small rural producers, saving them money, time and effort.