Ghanaian startup Retail Tower and Nigerian startup SimplePay have been selected as two of the top five global startups at the recent Seedstars World competition, although losing out on the number one spot to Korean initiative Flitto.
HumanIPO reported in January five African startups progressed into the 20 startups to compete at the global competition, chosen from over 1,000 applications from emerging markets worldwide.
The finalists participated in a week-long programme last week, including a three-day bootcamp and a semi-final, with only five startups progressing to the final where they pitched to 300 investors at the LIFT innovation and digital technologies conference in Geneva, Switzerland.
Ghana’s e-commerce marketing software solutions company Retail Tower and Nigeria’s secure online payments platform SimplePay were selected in the top five finalists, alongside Australia’s transport-sharing startup JayRide, and Chilean mobile language-learning startup Kudo!.
The top spot went to Korea’s crowdsourced translation platform Flitto, which was crowned “Best Startup in the World” by an international jury, although the amount of investment won by Flitto has not been revealed.
