Kytabu wins the 2015 GESA competition!
Kytabu wins the 2015 GESA competition!
Kytabu is “The Most Promising EdTech (Education Technology) Start Up of 2015” – this was the decision of the panel of judges in the “Global Edtech Startup Awards” (GESA) competition.
The announced was made on Monday at Google Campus in Tel Aviv, during a special event in honor of the UK and Israel technology ties, and in the presence of the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson MP, who is visiting Israel with a delegation of Education Technology and Smart Cities companies and business leaders.
Kytabu will receive $10k in cash reward, and will be able to utilize the large EdTech network and services offered by the GESA partners, which include EdTech accelerators and publishers from around the world.
Tonee Ndungo, founder and CEO of Kytabu, upon receiving the news on winning the competition
Kenya-based Kytabu aims at reducing the burden of education content on low income families, by digitizing all the content required in the education curriculum on a portable device, and allowing parents to rent micro-sized content for their children for short periods of time. The company claims that this drastically reduces the cost of learning content, introduces flipped learning into classrooms underserved by teachers, and leapfrogs traditional content by creating a platform that can accommodate more variation on learning content.
Cashtivity (Australia), which uses technology for project-based learning, came in 2nd, and Tabtor Math (U.S), a provider of personalized math tutoring, came in 3rd.
3 global finalists also attended the event in Tel Aviv: Proversity, winner of the UK finals, Domoscio, winner of the Continental Europe finals, and CNature, winner of the Israeli finals.
Avi Warshavsky (CEO MindCET), Ian Fordham (CEO EdTech Foundation), Saul Klein (co-founder, Kano), Zairah Khurshid (Proversity), Nadav Bocher (CEO, CNature), Ivan
Ostrowicz (CEO, Domoscio), Photo By Tomer Foltyn | our thanks to London Partners
“EdTech continuous its upward climb, as companies in that market raised more than $2.5b in the first six months of 2015 – more than the total investments in the entire 2014”, says Avi Warshavsky, CEO of MindCET. “We see increased awareness and offerings from many markets and countries, and witnessed an impressive stream of applications from Latin America, India and China for this year’s competition”.
Colombia-based Kuepa received special recognition as the winner of the “Cengage Learning LatAm EdTech Excellence award”, which was given to one Latin American EdTech company. Along with the recognition, Kuepa will also receive a $10k cash reward from Cengage Learning.
Right to left: Yishai Mor (Open Education Challenge), Ian Fordham (EdTech Foundation). Photo By Tomer Foltyn | our thanks to London Partners
More than 350 companies applied for the 2nd GESA competition, which was initiated by the Israeli-based EdTech accelerator MindCET, that partnered with leading incubators, accelerators, investors and publishers: CET, Israel; Edtech UK, United Kingdom; The European Union’s Open Education Challenge and P.A.U. Education, Spain; Inncubated, Colombia; Wayra UK; Cengage Learning Latin America; EDGE EdTech, NY ; Edugild, India and Viling Venture Partners of Japan.
We discovered a lot of innovative EdTech companies this year, and looking forward to getting to know more when we launch the 3rd GESA competition in early 2016. Congratulations to Kytabu, and let’s continue to create better learning experiences for everyone!