Lausanne, (Switzerland), April 2018. GreenTec Capital Partners is very pleased to report that AgroCenta has been selected as the Global Winner of the Seedstars 2018 Global Startup Competition. The company won out against 12 finalists from more than 6,000 entrants from 65+ countries to claim a $500,000 investment from Seedstars World.
Seedstars World is the biggest start-up competition focused on emerging markets and fast-growing start-up scenes. The company was selected from 12 finalists; CMED (Bangladesh), Celcoin (Brazil), Agrocenta (Ghana), Junkbot Robotics (UAE), Redcapital (Chile), Payit (Mexico), Eve.calls (Ukraine), GiftedMom (Cameroon), KarGo (Myanmar), Medsaf (Nigeria), SayurBox (Indonesia), and EMGuidance , finalist startup from (South Africa) out of the 65 startups that advanced to the global pitch. The 65 companies participated in a two-day boot-camp and private investor forum, where the 12 finalists were selected. AgroCenta was selected as the Global Winner on Summit Day, by the international jury which included judges Benjamin Benaïm, from Seedstars, Nikunj Jinsi and Theta Capital Group, who decided that this year’s investment will go to AgroCenta.
Other African start-ups also took home prizes including SolarFreeze from Kenyan, which has developed solar-powered cold storage for smallholder farmers and traders in Sub-Saharan Africa, received $50,000 from the ENEL Group. The Merck healthcare prize was awarded to South African medical content aggregation service EMGuidance, which received $50,000 and gained admission to Merck’s e-health accelerator. GreenTec was very impressed with the vibrancy and innovation among the Seedstars finalists.
The win represents the culmination of a very successful year of awards for the company including winning the SANAD Fincluders Challenge, winning the Social Good Category at Techcrunch’s Startup Battlefield Africa, and the World Summit Awards. AgroCenta joined twelve other start-ups at the Summit after winning the Seedstars Accra competition last fall. Company founders Francis Obirikorang and Michael K. Ocansey have been working tirelessly to grow the company’s business and develop their agricultural platform.
The company will use the funds to continue to develop its agricultural platform, including more features to help farmers connect to markets as well as to expand its PlantRite Program, which focuses on empowering rural women farmers with in-kind loans. The GreenTec team is very proud of AgroCenta’s achievements and we look forward to reporting on more successes in the future.