More than 15 startups from six cities all over Finland were competing for a prestigious StartUp Europe Awards in a National StartUp Europe Awards Pitch Competition, brought to Finland this year by Nordic Female Business Angel Network sponsored by NewCo, Helsinki Business Hub, Nordea and Slush.

The organizer NFBAN received 22 applications from Kotka to Turku and Tampere. 16 semi-finalists were invited to an online pitching event on November 16.  Each startup had a time slot of 10 minutes, during which they were pitching their company for 5 minutes and had 5 minutes to answer questions from 6 members of jury, representing experts from 3 different countries with diverse industry backgrounds, active and well established within the startup ecosystem.

High quality of presentations made jury’s task of selecting finalists and a winner quite a challenge. In the ceremony held at Newco on Thursday 24 November, from a shortlist of 8 finalists, were chosen five outstanding startups to represent Finland in the European final of StartUp Europe Awards.

PromoRepublic, a Finnish SaaS that helps Small Businesses and Marketers create amazing social media posts based on the context of the day: holidays, trends and events, will represent Finland in the ICT Category, and they also received first prize of the Pitch Competition.

For the ENERGY category, the winner is Tespack, specialized in providing a complete mobile energy experience by combining latest technology and renewables with a focus on generation of energy on-the-go.

Heimo, the anonymous & safe online community for untellable stories, was chosen in the category of SOCIAL.

For the TOURISM Category the jury chose Duara, a platform for communities in low-income countries to offer home stay experiences to impact-minded travelers.

Finally, Bryom wich turns smartwatches into a personal safety system replacing most elderly care wearables, devices and sensors with a single nice looking smart watch, will represent Finland for the category of HEALTH.

StartUp Europe Awards is promoted by the European Commission and supported by the President of the Committee of the Regions, several members of the European Parliament as Ambassadors and it is implemented by Finnova Foundation in collaboration with Startup Europe

For more information please contact Florence Korhonen, founder and Chair at NFBAN – Nordic Female Business Angel Network: email: florence.korhonen@nfban.org.