Tech accelerator Wayra has chosen 17 new digital startups to enter the Wayra Academy in April
Following a three-day intensive pitch process, dubbed “WayraWeek”, where 30 finalists were assessed and judged by a panel of eight experts, 17 new tech startups have been selected to take part in the Wayra Academy, starting next month.
The winning companies range from cloud computing startups through to social apps and healthcare software.
The Wayra London Academy opened in April 2012 and aims to connect startup founders with mentors and investors.
Winners taking part in the accelerator are offered up to €40,000 in funding, which can later be converted into a minority shareholding, typically between 5 and 10 per cent.
Watch Wayra-winner Dattch Dating in their Elevator Pitch video
Entrepreneurs are also offered access to a rent-free work space in the Wayra Academy as well as mentoring from top entrepreneurs, advisers and investors.
The full list of winners
- TicketingHub is a technology focused B2B cloud ticketing platform, which specialises in the management of sales and inventory of tickets.
- TankTop TV: Life’s too short for boring TV. TankTop TV builds the easiest way to find great content to watch, from all the on-demand sources.
- Songdrop is web application for people to store, play and share the music they stream online.
- Narrato: All your adventures, organized and backed up. Perfect for revisiting or selectively sharing.
- GoCarShare: A marketplace for empty car seats with a trusted community using Facebook.
- Eventstagram shows beautiful, live, customisable Instagram slideshows for events such as weddings, conferences, festivals and corporate events
- Peekster is a mobile application and basically a bridge between analog printed media and internet.
- Sponsor Craft is a Kickstarter for education. We help students crowdfund their projects, ideas, and events by connecting them to alumni, friends, and family.
- Dattch is the first dating app built exclusively for lesbian, bi & curious women. See who’s nearby & wants to meet to get yourself a date. Watch Dattch’s Elevator Pitch Video here.
- Removalstars.com is a Price comparison and online booking space for removals.
- JollyDeck is an effective system for #gamification of learning and knowledge examination in enterprises.
- iHELP is a mobile application and platform with the mission to increase safety and provide effective help in any type of emergency
- Ensygnia is a patented process to scan images to trigger actions such as payments or registrations Enygnia’s OneScan app makes it easy to login or make payments with just OneScan.
- Munch delivers good restaurant food from Wagamama, Pizza Express, Nando’s, GBK, Gaucho etc right to your front door!
- SaaSAssurance helps organisations gain ISO certification at a lower cost.
- EI Technologies strive to be the leader in solutions that are able to assess, identify, predict and respond to the emotions of consumers
- Gordon Games delivers Enterprise Gamification for knowledge workers and call centres
Some 3,444 startups from 32 countries applied to take part in one of the 13 Wayra academies worldwide.
In the UK, hundreds of applicants were whittled down to 30 finalists, who were judged at O2’s headquarters in Slough by a panel of judges including Silicon Valley Bank’s Bindi Karia, Seedr’s Jeff Lyn adn Amadeus’s Alex Van Someren among others.
New UK director
Wayra has also announced the appointment of a new Academy director, Charmaine Eggberry. Before joining Wayra, Eggberry was global senior vice president of marketing at Nokia, and has also worked at RIM, developing the company in the UK.
Commenting on the new Wayra intake, she said: “WayraWeek 2013 has been another massive success for us. We’ve invested in 17 startups and we’re proud that more than a third of our winning founders are women.
“I’m truly excited to take up this new opportunity as director of Wayra UK to continue to build on the phenomenal success of the programme to date. Wayra is an incredibly special and unique accelerator with a clear focus on supporting world-class talent as well as their world-class ideas. That’s an exciting journey to be a part of.”