Washbox24 has won Seedstars Bangkok, the Thai round of Seedstars World in 2014, the global startup competition for emerging markets and fast-growing startup scenes
Seedstars World has successfully concluded its regional event in Bangkok, which was hosted at PocketPlay Labs. The top 3 winning startups comprised of 1st place winner Washbox24, an innovative laundry service, 2nd place winner Claim.Di, a mobile app to file insurance claims, and Deehub, a t-shirt manufacturer. As a regional winner, Washbox24 will be invited to Geneva in February to compete with all the other regional winners globally as part of Seedstars World Final Event. Bond Thaiyanurak, Washbox24’s CEO stated: “This was an unbelievable win and we’re to go to Geneva and represent Thailand. It’s a great chance to reach European audiences and connect with startup key players from around the world.”
Based in Geneva, Switzerland and founded by Alisee de Tonnac and Pierre-Alain Masson, the competition is supported by the venture builder Seedstars SA. After its first successful edition in 2013 across 20 cities, SSW expanded its competition massively to more than 30 countries. Regional winners are invited back to Geneva to pitch for an equity investment of up to USD 500’000. The regional events feature up to 20 startups who must prove their worth in six minutes of pitching time and withstand the questions from a local jury of experts and a Seedstars World representative.
Alisee de Tonnac, SSW CEO, stated that “Seedstars World will hold its worldwide competition every year and we are expecting to grow exponentially to all the corners of the world and put all the fast growing startup scenes on the map! Indeed, our goal is to create THE network for quality entrepreneurs around the world and help entrepreneurs, accelerators/incubators, co-working spaces and investors to interact with one another.”
Seedstars Bangkok partner Hubba’s Cofounder & Co-CEO Amarit Charoenphan stated: “As witnessed in the pitching at Seedstars World, we believe that Thai startups are ready to not only represent but to set the benchmark of the quality, scalability and passion of tech startups in the Southeast Asian region. The ecosystem has grown leaps and bounds to over 300-500 startups in 4 major cities: Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Phuket and Khon Kaen. Through continued exposures and opportunities to pitch such as Seedstars, we hope that Thailand is now firmly placed on the Global startup map as an attractive destination not only to build scalable tech companies for the region and globally but also an investment destination for the hottest and talented tech founders.”
Other partners included Demo Asean and HotelQuickly, the latter of which was represented by Christian Mischler in the jury. Further jury members included Rodrigo Martinez, Founder & Director of Dikaios, and Efraim Pettersson Ivener, Founder & CEO of eKita, with Seedstars World’s Nellie Horn rounding out the jury. ThumbsUp and David Shelters from Thailand Startup Review, who gave a keynote on the “Thai startup community now and in the immediate future”. Also supported the event.
For its return to Thailand, SSW teamed up with Seedstars Asia partner Galixo, a boutique consultancy based in Singapore working with startups in developing their business strategy and entering new markets at global level. CEO and jury member Raphael Dana stated, “Seedstars World in Bangkok was really exciting with amazing new Thai startups, WashBox24 is clearly solving a problem as well as building a unique experience for customers, we’re excited that they will fly to Switzerland to compete at global level.”
The next stop of the tour is Seedstars Ho Chi Minh on the 16th of August. It continues on to Manila, Jakarta, Singapore, Shanghai, Sydney, Mexico City, Bogotá, Lima, Santiago, Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo.
About Seedstars World
Seedstars World is the most exclusive startup competition for emerging markets and fast-growing startup scenes. Based in Geneva, Switzerland and founded by Alisee de Tonnac and Pierre-Alain Masson, it is supported by the venture builder Seedstars.
After a first successful edition in 2013, the company aims to be the number one network for entrepreneurship in the world by expanding its competition massively.