Over 500 entrepreneurs and business professionals from Romania and CEE have joined Central European Startup Awards Grand Finale on November 21st in Bucharest. Central European Startup Awards Grand Finale is a complex regional event that brings together the best entrepreneurs, tech startups and ecosystem players in various industries. This year’s Grand Finale was organised by Impact Hub Bucharest and consisted of 2 important moments: the Ecosystem Summit and the Awards Ceremony.
The Ecosystem Summit
The first part of the day was dedicated to a series of panels, workshops and reverse pitching sessions with local and international guests. The main theme was Scaling and the agenda included topics such as: validation, financing, successful scaling or exit stories. You can see the full list of speakers here.
The Awards Ceremony
The regional winners of the competition were announced during a celebration event organized by Impact Hub Bucharest in the evening, at Radisson Blu Hotel. There were over 5500 nominations at the national levels and from those, just the best got into the regional phase. The winners were awarded based on public votes and votes from a regional jury made of professionals from Poland, US, Israel, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland.
Here are the winners of the 17 categories at Central European Startup Awards:
- Startup of the Year – Druid SA (Romania)
- Best Accelerator or Incubator Program – Techcelerator (Romania)
- Digital Nomad / Freedompreneur of the Year – Petra Fuerst (Austria)
- Female Role Model of the Year – Tanja Sternbauer (Austria)
- Best Social Impact Startup – I Rise Mechanics 357 LTD (Bulgaria)
- Best IoT Startup – Neuron Soundware (Czech Republic)
- Founder of the Year – Ivan Jelusic (Croatia)
- Best Coworking Space – Impact Hub Czech Republic (Czech Republic)
- Best Fintech Startup – Spendee (Czech Republic)
- Best Health Tech Startup – SignAll (Hungary)
- Best Newcomer – TrustChain (Hungary)
- Best Smart City Solution – Parkl (Hungary)
- Best AI/ Machine Learning Startup – Emplocity Sp. z o.o. (Poland)
- Best Software Development Partner – Geckodynamics (Poland)
- Investor of the Year – Launchhub (Bulgaria)
- Best Blockchain Startup – Bethereum (Slovakia)
- People’s Choice – Develiot (Bulgaria)
Congratulations to all of you #Futureshapers, let’s make the future better for all of us!
Central European Startup Awards Grand Finale was possible thanks to Raiffeisen Bank, EFSE Development Facility, Samsung, Orange, KISS FM, Microsoft, Dade2, Oktogon.