UK startups have dominated in the first of three semi-finals of the Innotribe Startup Challenge, with three of five finalists coming from London.
The European leg of the semi-finals was held in Level39, Canary Wharf yesterday and was dubbed Startup Challenge London.
Across the three worldwide semi-finals, the UK is the third most represented country with seven startups – second only to the USA (13) and Singapore (8) – showing Britain punching well above its weight.
London calling
From 47 semi-finalists, each semi-final put five startups through to the final – three early-stage and two growth-stage – making 15 finalists in total.
The three early-stage startups to get through last night’s semi-final were all London-based: exchange rate comparison site CurrencyTransfer, mobile payment service Ensygnia and international money transferrer TransferGo.
The two growth-stage startups were cloud banking platform Mambu and digital wallet MatchMove.
The last legs
The London Startup Challenge was sponsored by HP, Invest NI, Level39, and SAP, and its counterpart – the Singapore and New York Startup Challenges – will be held on 15 May and 5 June respectively.
The Grand Finale will be held at Sibos, SWIFT’s annual conference, which this year will take place in Boston in October.