Britain dominates the Innotribe Startup Challenge

UK startups have dominated in the first of three semi-finals of the Innotribe Startup Challenge, with three of five finalists coming from London.

The European leg of the semi-finals was held in Level39, Canary Wharf yesterday and was dubbed Startup Challenge London.

Across the three worldwide semi-finals, the UK is the third most represented country with seven startups  – second only to the USA (13) and Singapore (8) – showing Britain punching well above its weight.

London calling

From 47 semi-finalists, each semi-final put five startups through to the final – three early-stage and two growth-stage – making 15 finalists in total.

The three early-stage startups to get through last night’s semi-final were all London-based: exchange rate comparison site CurrencyTransfer, mobile payment service Ensygnia and international money transferrer TransferGo.

The two growth-stage startups were cloud banking platform Mambu and digital wallet MatchMove.

The last legs

The London Startup Challenge was sponsored by HP, Invest NI, Level39, and SAP, and its counterpart – the Singapore and New York Startup Challenges – will be held on 15 May and 5 June respectively.

The Grand Finale will be held at Sibos, SWIFT’s annual conference, which this year will take place in Boston in October.