Canada’s reelyActive was named ‘World’s Best Technology Startup’ at final of Startup World, an initiative to promote startups and entrepreneurship globally.
reelyActive connects the digital and physical worlds together by using wireless radio sensors connected to the internet. From this they create what they call ‘hyperlocal context’, capturing real-time snapshots of people, places and points of interest in real life.
Their technology is the latest in a series of innovations referred to as the ‘Internet of Things’. Cisco predict the number of connected ‘things’ (devices) will balloon to 50 billion by 2020.
Global startup competition
The startup, based out of Montreal beat off competition from 15 entrepreneurs who flew in from Africa, North/South America and Europe to pitch on stage at the event, held at co-working space Parisoma.
Supported by American Airlines, Tropo, Eventbrite, Rackspace, NakedWines and UserVoice, the competition has taken place in 20 world cities over the past two years.
Startup movement
Founders of Startup World Hermione Way and Erick Davidson started the project when they noticed a growing trend of startups and entrepreneurship outside of Silicon Valley:
“We live in a time where building technology startups is truly a global story, all you need is a laptop and a wifi connection and there’s no reason why you can’t build the next Facebook or Google. The next billion dollar startup could well come from Africa or the Middle East” said Way.
Recognition for best mobile startup went to Geddit, most innovative startup, New York’s Placemeter, Best enterprize startup Mexico City’s Modebo and most human impact startup Vancouver’s Change Heroes.
Crypho were crowned London winners at Level39 back in April, but were knocked out in a later round.