East African mobile startups pitching competition PIVOT East has opened applications, with startups invited to compete in five categories.
The event, for which applications close on April 30, is organised by m:lab East Africa – a consortium comprising iHub, eMobilis, University of Nairobi and the World Wide Web Foundation.
PIVOT East aims to catalyse the growth of mobile startups in order to consolidate the gains of East Africa’s mobile developer and entrepreneurship ecosystem. The key objective for this year’s event is “to facilitate discovery of the next wave of high potential mobile startups in the region”.
The competition has five categories – Mobile Finance, Mobile Enterprise, Mobile Entertainment, Mobile Utilities and Mobile Society and Governance – with each category featuring five finalists who will pitch to an audience of investors, development partners, government representatives, operators and other key mobile industry players from East Africa. Finalists will receive training and coaching on how to pitch to investors.
“Applications to compete in 2015 will be entered as detailed startup profiles which describe the customer pain, the startups solution, revenue streams, team composition and commitment, market traction, short-term projections and milestones among other aspects,” m:lab East Africa said.
“The overall startup profile will be used by the competition judges who will mostly be investors to score the potential of the startup to become a sustainable high growth enterprise.”
