LayUp named Sri Lanka’s best start-up at Seedstars Colombo
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The Winners
Seedstars World, the global seed-stage startup competition for emerging markets and fast-growing start-up scenes, brought its Sri Lankan round to a successful close during Seedstars Colombo. The event took place last week at Trace City Expert Colombo where eight selected start-ups were invited to present their ideas in front of the local jury panel. The local winner, LayUp, a learning driven social platform to discover a new way to train, engage and reward employees, was selected as the best startup in Sri Lanka for its user-friendly solution, a media release by the local organisers said.
“I realised during my corporate tenure there was no effective, engaging product on the market that addresses the problem of online training,” explained Sheran Corera, founder of LayUp. As a part of the prize, LayUp will be participating at Seedstars Summit, taking place in Switzerland in March 2017, a weeklong training programme with the opportunity to meet the other 60 winners, as well as investors and mentors from around the world. Traditionally, the final day of the summit will be dedicated to pitching in front of an audience of 1000 attendees, with the possibility of winning up to US$1 million in equity investment.
NicNac with its personal digital butler service came second and Katha, a social, audio content creation platform, grabbed the third position. The other startups invited to pitch were PayMedia, Foodie Global, Touristeun, Hype Hash and PreviewVR. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe attended the event along with Mano Sekaram, Chairman of SLASSCOM. Continuing on its world tour of startup competitions in emerging markets and fast-growing startup eco system, Seedstars World’s next stop is Hong Kong at the newly opened entrepreneurship space in LKF, Metta to select the best startup in the city. Seedstars World is looking for smart startups that solve regional issues and/or develop profitable products for the global market.