Kenyan startup Twiga Fruits has been named the overall winner of this year’s 1776’s Challenge Cup startup competition. Twiga will get US$150,000 in seed funding from 1776. Judges also selected three Challenge Cup Global Winners from among the nine finalists
- Cognotion — Cognotion identifies talent, delivers functional utilization of knowledge, and decreases employee churn rate using gaming and video tools designed for entry-level millennials. They use emotion and context to teach hard and soft skills to entry level employees. New York, New York
- Radiator Labs — Radiator Labs takes old, wasteful buildings and, via a unique patent-pending product offering, improves their heating efficiencies up to LEED standard levels. Brooklyn, New York
- ReliefWatch — ReliefWatch is an inventory management platform targeted at multinational non-governmental organizations operating health clinics in developing countries. Chicago, Illinois
LearnLux also won the $10,000 Audience’s Choice award.
The Challenge Cup, organized by startup incubator 1776, is an annual world-wide competition that spans 16 cities in 11 countries to identify the most promising startups. Nairobi was the only city in Africa to host a leg of this year’s competition. The competition has four categories which are education, energy, health, and transport and cities.
Twiga Fruits has created a solution that offers farmers a formal guaranteed prices, handles the produce with care to eliminate loss and delivers directly to thousands of independent shops. Twiga was competing in the transport and cities category.
Another Kenyan Taskwetu, an online errand running, tracking and project management platform, competed and pitched at the Challenge Festival in Washington D.C.