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The semifinal of the competition Global EdTech Startup Awards presented the nine finalist startups from Latin America. The first and second-place winning initiatives were C1D01 and Storybook. Later they will compete in the global final that will take place in the International Conference on Educational Innovation (CIIE 2023).
After more than 90 applications were received during the call, the selection process arrived at the most innovative EdTech (Educational technology) ventures in Latin America. Each startup was assigned four minutes to pitch its educational solution during the event.
Sabrina Seltzer, the EdTech Entrepreneurship and Transfer Leader of the Institute for the Future of Education (IFE), welcomed them on behalf of the Venture Café run by Tec de Monterrey.
The competition is held annually, and renowned experts from the region linked to the world of educational entrepreneurship are invited to be part of its jury. The jury this year included Daniella Domínguez, Leader of the Mexico Amazon Web Services (AWS) Start Program; Martha Belden, Platzi Strategy Director; Fernando Valenzuela, Founder of EdLatam Alliance; Marcelo Burbano, Managing Partner of Prismapar; and José Escamilla, Associate Director of the Institute for the Future of Education.
The selection criteria included innovation, considering the solution’s impact; the team’s experience and collaboration; scalability, looking at the growth plan; and the ecosystem, focusing on the strategic alliances created.
With the above in mind, the jury chose the first and second-place winners to represent Latin America in the world-final competition. Dr. José Escamilla revealed the winners, C1D01 and Storybook, respectively.
Meet the winning projects
First place was won by C1D01 (Chile), a digital platform for teaching technical skills remotely. With this solution, students can upload a video practicing a specific skill and receive feedback in multimedia comments (text, drawings, videos, or audio). C1D01 was born as a tool to teach medical procedures; however, today, it has a wide variety of disciplines, including nursing, engineering, gastronomy, and programming.
In the last two years, it has accumulated 13,000 users with a presence in nine countries and projected user feedback of approximately one million for this year internationally.
Storybook (Chile) was awarded second place. It is the number one application for the well-being and sleep of children. The solution, aimed at parents and children, combines bedtime storytelling with music and relaxation techniques (meditation and infant massage). In this way, adults can share more quality time with their children while improving their emotional and sleep health, something that technology alone cannot replace.
Today, the company has partnerships with some of the largest consumer packaged-goods companies and schools. They have over 100 original audio stories and upload four new ones monthly. In addition, children from 0 to 12 can use the app in Spanish, English, and Portuguese.
7 GESAwards LATAM finalists
1. FractalUp | Marcos Vargas (Peru)
FractalUp is an application that connects education, technology, and marketing. It is a software cloud service that enables massive open online courses (MOOCs) to be streamed synchronously and asynchronously. This artificial intelligence (AI) recommendation engine personalizes learning methodologies, offering schools-accredited, real-time evaluations.
2. PROtalento | Juanita Ordoñez (Mexico)
PROtalento provides training, adequate financing, and job placement to undiscovered talent. The solution creates education for employability through personalized training for companies based on their needs, a shorter and more accessible educational technology for higher education programs, and financing for 97% of its students through critical alliances with banks and fintech companies.
3. ARUKAY | Vicky Ricaurte (Colombia)
ARUKAY has digital content for students. It is a management platform for schools and teacher training. The solution has a cloud-based curricular learning system for K-12 schools that teaches coding and computational thinking with STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) challenges and projects. Its services include digital content for students, a management platform for educational institutions, and teacher training. Arukay is available in Spanish, English, and Portuguese.
4. DEV.F | Manuel Morato (Mexico)
DEV.F accelerates social mobility in Latin America by making education widely accessible. The startup offers cohort-based live online courses that provide students with job opportunities in the technology sector. They are a certified sustainable corporation with a digital campus where students use a learning management system. This way, it is possible to collect granular data about the learning curve to provide a superior educational experience.
5. MindHub | Patricia Martucci (Argentina)
MindHub is a solution to integrate education with employment in the technology industry. The beneficiaries are students and companies with intensive educational programs (or synchronous bootcamps with an academic team), which reduce the market’s lack of professional talent. They facilitate students’ successful transition to a technology company by simulating real work environments.
6. TOMI.digital | Juan Lopera (Colombia)
TOMi.digital is a remote learning application to present courses in classrooms even without the internet. This formative and personalized assessment content solution is universally accessible and based on a decentralized network. They also offer various devices and templates so teachers can create interactive academic experiences without needing high-quality internet or an internet connection.
7. Smartraining | Gustavo Aguilar (Chile)
Smartraining has virtual training centers where students can practice asynchronously in the metaverse with web, mobile, or virtual reality platforms. The tool creates content with technology quickly and at a low cost, improving its users’ employability and salaries.
The grand finale of the GESAwards brings together different players from the education industry worldwide and will take place on January 18, 2023, during the International Conference on Educational Innovation (CIIE). For more information about the competition, visit: https://www.globaledtechawards.org/.
Translation by Daniel Wetta
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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 
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