Three projects from three countries were chosen ahead of 15 finalists as the top initiatives on the final day of Startup Istanbul, an initiative launched by the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB) and E-Tohum to promote newly launched businesses.
The three winners were selected from 15 finalists, narrowed down from dozens of other innovative projects shortlisted at Startup Istanbul on Oct. 10. This year’s event had more than 500 selected startups and more than 4,000 attendees.
“CashBasha,” an e-Commerce technology firm from Jordan enabling customers in emerging markets to shop at their favorite e-commerce stores with ease, ranked first.
With CashBasha, customers from the Middle East and North Africa can shop from popular foreign online shopping sites and receive their items right to their doorstep with the preferred payment, logistics, customs clearance and customer service solutions all taken care of.
CashBasha currently serves Amazon U.S. orders into the region and is growing to incorporate additional merchants and marketplaces.
Ranking second was Turkish cyber security startup “InnoveraLabs,” founded in 2015 to automate defenses against cyberattacks.
InnoveraLabs works with many enterprises in Turkey to formulate cyber defense mechanisms in a timely manner. Based on customer-defined scenarios, it vigorously responds to cyberattack indicators like a skilled human operator, only much faster, according to executives.
Third place in the rankings was mobile-first contact management software “Pobuca” from Greece, also founded last year, which focuses on sharing contact information between co-workers.
Pobuca lets users share a unified address book with co-workers and get access from any device, desktop or mobile, allowing users to sync a shared organization address book to a smartphone app.
Pobuca fits any organization, as an easy-to-use company-wide address book that syncs with mobile and gets automatically updated with contacts is an essential need against other alternatives such as Excel/Access files, smartphone contacts lists and CRM application.
Included in the final 15 shortlist were FigPii, an all-in-one, easy to use, growth hacking platform from Turkey; Kitabisa.com, Indonesia’s most popular online fundraising and donation platform; Kostoom, a fashion entrepreneur connecting tailors and designers with the shared economy concept; La Marocaine Des E-Services, which aims to revolutionize the relationship between citizens and governments; MASS Analytics from Tunisia; MyDoctor.pk from Pakistan; Otsimo from Turkey; PickPack from Poland; Qirtas from Saudi Arabia; SkyCryptor from Armenia; Treble from Pakistan; and Urbanhire from Indonesia.
Startup Istanbul, which was held between Oct. 6 and 11, brought together entrepreneurs, founders, investors and executives in the region, allowing days of networking between leading startups, Internet companies, business angels and venture capitalists from Asia and Europe.
“Istanbul is the perfect setting for a tech conference for Digital Minded Companies, Ventures and Startups with global ambitions in the region,” the organizers stated. (Hürriyetdailynews)
