Local firm to participate in global tech contest

A local firm, Crowd Funding Project, on Wednesday, beat nine other tech firms to represent the country in the Start-up World competition to be held at Silicon Valley, California.Silicon Valley is home to many of the world’s largest technology corporations, like Miscrosoft, Google, Facebook, HP among others, as well as thousands of small innovative start-ups.Ara Nashera, 25, a first year Economics student at Kigali Independent University (ULK), expressed his delight after her triumph.“I am really excited to win this competition and I thank the judges for understanding our project concept and its value to business start-ups,” said Nashera, who is also the Director of Zilencio Creativo, an innovative branding firm based in Kigali.Crowd Funding Project facilitates innovators to upload their projects on its website for funding. The platform enables people to sign up and contribute funds through SMS to support start-ups.The panel of five judges crowned Crowd Funding Project as the winner owing to its impact on many technology based firms. The other nine contestants included HeHe Ltd Campusolve, Zilencio Creativo, TorQue, M-AHWII, Plusgreen Online, OSCA Connect, Guhaha and GO - Binary LogicLocal judges including Patrick Kabagema, Managing Director of Rock Global Consulting (RGC), Jack Kayonga Managing Director of Rwanda Development Bank, Rica Rwigamba, Head of Tourism and Conservation at Rwanda Development Board, Tony Sebera, Acting CEO of Broadband Systems Corporation and Bruce H. Krogh, Director of Carnegie Mellon University-Rwanda (CMU-R) listened attentively to the presentations. Each presentation was given only three minutes to impress while two minutes were reserved for feedback.Announcing the winner, the head judge Kabagema said Crowd Funding Project has the potential to promote the growth of other start-ups as its acts as a channel through which people can contribute financially to entrepreneurs that need funding.“We hope to use this platform for Agaciro funding,” he said. Moulded alongside Americas Next Top Model, Start-up World is a global competition that aims at unearthing talent in the ICT world with potential to become the next big thing following the footsteps of Google, Facebook or twitter.The Kigali event comes days after a delegation from Startup World met in Nairobi-Kenya and Cape Town, South Africa. Another similar meeting is slated to take place in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania today.“I am very impressed by the passion of young Rwandans who want to be the global entrepreneurs. During the tour, we realised that Rwandan females are not left behind in ICT business innovation,” Hermione Way, co-founder of Startup World, an international initiative told The New Times in an interview.Way, who is an ICT reporter-cum-promoter in the Silicon Valley is the brains behind Start-Up World, an initiative she says was inspired by challenge she saw start-ups undergo in attracting world attention.She noted that the idea is aimed at promoting entrepreneurship and startup culture globally by providing them with a bigger platform to showcase their innovations as future global entrepreneurs.Startup World is a global competition with the aim of unearthing the next great startups outside Silicon Valley. The preliminary rounds of the competition were held in 36 cities world-wide.Winners from African cities that include Cape Town, South Africa Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, as well as Kigali will head to Silicon Valley for the grand finale in early 2013. Each participant is scheduled to benefit from a cash award of $37,000, six months of web-hosting sponsored by US-based open cloud company, Rackspace, and valued at US$ 3,000, as well as one million Echo real-time streams valued at US$7,000.The Start-up World’s Grand Finale winner will receive a three-month incubation period valued at $30,000 and sponsored by i/o Ventures, one-year of hosting worth up to $24,000 sponsored by Rackspace, five million real-time Echo streams per month for one year worth $30,000 and coverage before the Next Web’s global audience of nearly eight million.The Kigali event was organised by Start-up World in partnership with Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT), under the patronage of the Ministry of Youth and ICT.

National

Local firm to participate in global tech contest