CESAwards: Announcing The Best Startups In Central-Eastern Europe

by: FOXYpreneur

Published on: December 2, 2016

The Central European Startup Awards is the Central-European region’s biggest no-pitch, no-conference startups festival has announced the most affluent startups and ecosystem supporters last night, on the 1st of December, 2016 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Central European Startup Awards (CESAwards) is part of the Global Startup Awards network, working closely in 4 regions, the Nordics and Central-Europe in Europe and in South East Asia and India in the Asian region. With these 4 major regions the Global Startup Awards initiative maps and recognizes the créme de la créme of the local startup and entrepreneurial ecosystems, running over 30 unique events in each of the participating countries.

The Best Out Of 800 Nominatations In 12 Categories

In 2016 the CESAwards received a little over 800 unique nominations across all 12 categories with particular strength in the “Best Early Stage” category, where nearly 150 companies entered the competition, which are younger than one year. With such ambition and entrepreneurial spirit coming from the region we can clearly expect incredible things for the future of Central Europe.

Another extremely competitive category was “Best Social Impact” – Sponsored by CEU BSch, here we found a playground of exciting concepts designed to better the living conditions of everyday people, whether through health-care, education, agriculture or more.

CESAwards proudly presents the full list of 2016 winners below:

Startup Of The Year & Best Social Impact Startup: Brainly, Poland

Quote: “Developing countries have been struggling with the education inequality problem for years now, our platform is empowering millions of students to solve their school problems by peer to peer learning model. At Brainly we often say that we believe that there is no single person that knows everything. But, we believe that everyone knows something.”

Best FinTech Startup: Invoice Exchange, Slovenia

Quote: “Invoice Xchange is a web-based platform that supports and enables SMEs that supply blue-chip companies and government to sell their invoices and purchase orders on an exchange and attain immediate payment.”

Best Early Stage Startup: GREYCORTEX, Czech Republic

Quote: “Using advanced methods of artificial intelligence, machine learning and data mining to help organizations make their IT operations more secure and reliable.”

Best Coworking Space: sektor5, Austria

Quote: “”Instant office – workspace dealer!” Coworking fuels your inspiration, accelerates your productivity & empowers your network. We are more than just a co-working space – we are a community of entrepreneurs.”

Most Influential Woman: Urška Sršen, Croatia

Quote: “Co-founder of Bellabeat, a Y Combinator backed company developing systems in prenatal an neonatal care.”

Best IoT Startup: Kontakt.io, Poland

Quote: “Beacon Hardware. Reimagined. Your infrastructure will get smarter, more sustainable, and data driven with Kontakt.io’s next generation products. Welcome to the Industrial IoT.

Best AI/Chatbot Solution: Imagga, Bulgaria

Quote: “Imagga is an Image Recognition Platform-as-a-Service providing Image Tagging APIs for developers & businesses to build scalable, image intensive cloud apps.”

Best Indie Game Developer: Awakening of Heroes, Serbia

Quote: “Awakening of Heroes is a multi-platform indie game for a mid-core gamers, a perfect balance between casual games and pretty demanding Multiplayer Online Battle Arena genre. Built by indie game development studio COFA Games”

Best Acceleration/Incubation Program: Huge Thing, Poland

Quote: “HugeThing.vc is an intensive acceleration programme, based in Poland, the programme is dedicated to startups working on a scalable, innovative idea. During this period, we aim to provide a series of methods and resources for their development and growth.”

Investor of the Year: Andrej Kiška, Czech RP

Quote: “Startup investor at the early-stage venture capital fund Credo Ventures. Startup blogger at Medium https://medium.com/@kiskandrej , guest contributor at The Next Web, Forbes, Tyinternety.cz, Czechrunch, Netokracija.com, Startitup.sk. Forbes 30 under 30″
Website:

Best User Experience: Nostromo.io, Hungary

Quote: “We are really proud to be part of the Central European Startup Awards and be able to represent Hungary in the regional final. One of our goal was to create a truly usable and lovable product and we are really happy that our users have the experience they deserve, so being the national winner of the best UX category is truly an honor.”

People’s Choice: Everytap, Poland

Quote: “With Everytap you will discover best places in your city and save money when making orders using the app with a single tap.”

The winners of 2016 CESAwards will have the chance to compete globally with other regions in the Global Grand Finals 2017 (date and place to be announced).