The eight most promising Latin American EdTech startups in 2018

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INCmty hosted the Latin-American Global EdTech Startups Awards (GESA) semifinals.

The eight most promising Latin American EdTech startups in 2018
The contest aims to identify and recognize the most promising EdTech startups in the world — those companies whose innovative learning solutions show great potential.
Reading time 3 minutes
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Last November 11, INCmty, the largest entrepreneurship festival in Latin America, hosted one of the Global EdTech Startups Awards (GESA) semifinals. EdTech startups from all Latin-American countries (excluding Brazil) contended for a position in GESA’s final round to be held in London in 2019.

The Global EdTech Startups Awards is an initiative led by a group of educational innovation organizations from around the world, including EdTech Incubator (London), EDGE Tech (New York), MindCET (Tel Aviv and Yeruham), OpenEDChallenge (Barcelona), Prismapar (Latin America), among others.

The contest aims to identify and recognize the most promising EdTech startups in the world — those companies whose innovative learning solutions show great potential.

David Garza, provost of Tec de Monterrey, preceded the event and emphasized the commitment of the university to promote innovative educational solutions to transform current education and build the future.

“Since its conception, one of GESA’s main objectives was to demonstrate to the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Latin America that there are successful EdTech startups in our region. This year we showed that the ecosystem is being strengthened and that it is possible to have several million-dollar educational startups, and attract interest and investments from recognized global private equity funds”, said Fernando Valenzuela Migoya, Global Edtech Startup Awards judge.

Eight outstanding startups were selected from more than 130 emerging EdTech companies in Latin America. The participants presented their educational solutions to a regional panel of judges and an audience of more than 100 attendees. The criteria to choose the winner included the startup’s scalability, teamwork, and the novelty of their educational solutions.

The judges awarded the Colombian startup BabySparks as the most promising Latin American EdTech startup of 2018. For its part, the Mexican startup Bedu was the regional runner-up.

The panel of judges included Rogelio de los Santos, Managing Partner of Dalus Capital and board member of Tecnológico de Monterrey, Sourabh Ahuja, Product Director of GSVlabs, Ash Kaluarachchi, co-founder and Managing Partner of StartEd, and Fernando Valenzuela, partner and board member of Prismapar.

The eight semifinalist startups of GESA LATAM 2018 were the following:

  1. Colegium (Chile): A leading school management and pedagogical development company with a presence in Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, and Uruguay. Colegium aims to improve the overall management of schools offering solutions for teachers, administrators, directors, officials, students and, parents.

  2. Digital House (Argentina): An educational organization that aims to improve the lives of people developing their digital skills. It offers training under an innovative methodology based on practice, with campuses in Buenos Aires, Argentina and in San Pablo, Brazil. Digital House offers numerous courses such as Full Stack and Mobile Web Programming for iOS and Android operating systems, Digital Business Management, User Experience Design (UX); Data Science, Data Analytics, Digital Marketing, and Artificial Intelligence.

  3. BabySparks (Colombia): A mobile platform that assists new parents to cover the needs of their children, feeling like they have support from a team of early development experts. The program has three key components: supporting, monitoring and evaluating development. BabySparks adjusts its program to each child’s specific development profile through intelligent adaptive technology.

  4. Crehana (Peru): Crehana is an on-demand learning platform for creative and digital professionals. Its iOS and Android apps have the purpose of reaching more people looking to learn skills such as graphic design, digital illustration, motion graphics, and 3D modeling, in a fast and practical way.

  5. Leaducate (Mexico): Leaducate helps students find their ideal university according to their profile, needs, and preferences. At the same time, it assists higher education institutions in attracting students in a pay-for-results model that minimizes management and risk.

  6. Bedu (Mexico): Bedu is a mixed-learning academy for the development of digital programming and business skills. In Bedu students learn through a blended model, studying the theory online and attending classes to strengthen and apply the knowledge acquired.

  7. Eidos Global (Argentina): EIDOS Global designs tailored, impact-oriented and scalable educational solutions for governments and companies that need to train people with the skills and knowledge for the jobs of the future.

  8. Ludibuk (Chile): Ludibuk turns regular books into more engaging experiences. Ludibuk platform has a digital library that offers a revolutionary reading experience for Spanish-speaking students, working to improve their reading rates and level of comprehension.

Both BabySparks and Bedu will have the opportunity to compete in the global final of the Global Edtech Startup Awards, to be held in London in 2019. The winning startup will receive a total of USD 50,000 in prizes and will obtain global exposure in the EdTech market, mentoring with experts from the ecosystem at an international level, among other awards.

For more information, visit www.globaledtechawards.org.


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