In March, we announced the call-up for Start-ups for the 2015 edition of the Pivot East competition. Pivot East is a stratups competition geared towards nurturing the growing ICT talent in East Africa. This year’s edition of the competition is mirrored on the objective of “facilitating the discovery of the next wave of high potential mobile startups in the region”. The competition attracted startups from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Ethiopia applying as well as others from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Burundi and Israel applying to join the competition.
Ten semi-finalists have been selected in five categories which include Mobile Finance, Mobile Enterprise, Mobile Entertainment, Mobile Utilities and Mobile Society and Governance. From the 50, 25 finalists will be selected before undergoing training prior to the event. The 25 selected will then have a chance of pitching to an audience of Investors, Development Partners, Government Representatives and other key mobile industry players from East Africa.
The competition, in it’s fifth edition this year saw the judges evaluate the ideas presented based on startups’ purported customer pain, opportunity and customer segments, the solution and its fit to the problem, the revenue
model, and analysis of the competitive landscape. Some of the finalists include Eko Biashara, BitFinance, Hisa Play, SoftProviders in the finance category. Duma Works enderpreneur.net and E-Kodi under enterprise while Boresha, Moview, Makarao were selected under entertainment segment. Politik, eBantu, SoftBallot and Soma Africa were among those selected under governance. About 75 mobile startups from across East Africa have participated as finalists of past PIVOT East editions. 20% of these startups have cumulatively raised over $5million in funding
after their participation in the competition.
