Pivot East Competition & Conference

Photo Credit: Pivot East

Africa Startup Ecosystem in on fire thanks to Pivot East, one of the most prestigious mobile startup competitions and conferences  held annually since 2011. PIVOT East aims to catalyze the growth of mobile startups, so as to amplify and consolidate the gains of East Africa’s Mobile developer and entrepreneurship ecosystem.  

The PIVOT EAST competition is a six month long program of targeted educational workshops for mobile entrepreneurs and business advisory session and  It culminates in the top 25 mobile startups pitching to investors and partners at a finalists conference.

The competition has five categories with each having five finalists pitching to a rich audience of Investors, Development Partners, Government Representatives, Telecoms Operators and other key industry players from East Africa and beyond. The categories include:

1. Mobile Finance
2. Mobile Enterprise
3. Mobile Entertainment
4. Mobile Society
5. Mobile Utilities

The 2013 competition attracted 130 startups applications from Across East Africa, with 88 applications from Kenya, 30 from Uganda, 10 from Tanzania, one from Rwanda and one from Ethiopia in the Finance, Entertainment, Society, Utility and Enterprise categories. Five category winners were announces, one from each category during the gala dinner.

Expectations for this year are very high and that’s the reason why they have partnered with 8 tech hubs from across the region who will play a key role in Mobilizing startups and developers in its communities to submit entries to the PIVOT East startups platform and conduct outreaches and workshops on our behalf.The hubs include Outbox (Uganda), Hive Colab (Uganda), KINU (Tanzania), Buni (Tanzania), kLab (Rwanda), iceaddis (Ethiopia), iBiz Africa (Kenya) and C4DLab (Kenya).

The call for applications for Pivot East 2014  Competition has been opened up until 11th April 2014 where 25 finalists in the competition will receive training, coaching and mentorship on how to arrive at repeatable and scalable business models. The finalists will also receive training and coaching on how to pitch to investor.

Stay tuned to the whole competition and discover amazing startups in Nairobi. We are also preparing a next interview with the Producer for Pivot East 2013, Moses Kemibaro and an informal talk with one of the participating startups last year.

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