Eighty tech startups from around the world came to D.C. this week to show their stuff and compete for hundreds of thousands of dollars in investment money as part of 1776's Challenge Festival. On Saturday the nine finalists pitched their all to the judges and peers and now the champions stand revealed. The overall winner and winner in the cities and transportation category is NeoKenya, a Nairobi, Kenya-based startup and developer of Twiga, which handles getting produce from farms to thousands of independent stalls while guaranteeing prices for farmers at the same time as part of the effort to fight rising food prices in Kenya. It's the country's leading exporter of bananas, pineapples and avocados. As winner, NeoKenya has earned a $100,000 investment on top of the $50,000 it won as a semifinalist.
The 2015 #1776Challenge Champion is...Kenya-based @TwigaFruits! (There's always money in the banana stand)
— 1776 (@1776) May 17, 2015
“Over the past six months, we’ve traveled the globe to find the world’s most promising startups working to develop innovative solutions to fundamental challenges in education, energy & sustainability, health, and cities & transportation,” said 1776 co-founder Donna Harris in a statement. “After going against stiff competition throughout the Challenge Cup, Twiga Fruits emerged tonight as this year’s most promising, problem-solving startup, and we look forward to helping them innovate and improve the Transportation & Cities industry for years to come.”
The other categories had their own winners. In energy, the winner was New York-based Radiator Labs, maker of intelligent radiators that can adjust to lower energy costs. The education winner was New York-based Cognotion, which uses gamification and video technology to teach skills to entry-level employees. Chicago-based ReliefWatch, a platform for helping NGO's run health clinics in the developing world, won the health category. The audience, which heard a one-minute pitch from each company, got to vote for a $10,000 for their favorite as well, with Boston-based LearnLux, creator of personal finance teaching tools used by employers to help employees improve their financial independence, taking home that award.
