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Women Startup Challenge
2017 Europe

Grand Prize: Simprints
May 3, 2017 at City Hall in London
Simprints, a startup that aims to become the first identity provider for the 1.5 billion people who do not have formal IDs, won the €50,000 grand prize. The event was cohosted by the Office of the Mayor of London.

Women Who Tech’s fifth Women Startup Challenge showcased 10 of the best early stage women-led startups from across Europe at City Hall in London, cohosted by the Office of the Mayor.

The 10 startups were chosen from hundreds of applicants, and the Women Startup Challenge was co-produced with Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist and Craig Newmark Philanthropies, on May 3, 2017.

Grand Prize

Simprints

Pitching Founder: Alexandra Grigore
Country: UK

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Simprints cofounder Alexandra Grigore

Simprints developed an inexpensive biometric scanner, mobile app, and cloud platform that has become the first identity provider for the 1.5 billion people who do not have formal IDs around the world. By using people’s fingerprints to accurately link them to records, Simprints aims to create a world where lack of identity is never the reason why anyone is denied the services, care, and rights they deserve.


 Audience Choice Award

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Lifebit cofounder Dr. Maria Chatzou

Lifebit

Pitching Founder: Dr. Maria Chatzou
Country: Spain

Lifebit is creating the operating system of genomics. Their unified framework system enables insightful, real-time genomics analyses by making them easy to deploy, portable across clusters and clouds, scalable no matter the size of the data to be analyzed, reproducible, and more time and cost-efficient.

Prizes

€50,000
Grand Prize
+OTHER
Critical Startup Services
$120,000
IBM Cloud Services

Women Startup Challenge 2017 Europe Finalists

BLITAB®
Kristina Tsvetanova
Epicery
Elsa Hermal
Lifebit
Dr Maria Chatzou
Open Bionics
Samantha Payne
See Fashion
Ivana Ojukwu
Simprints
Alexandra Grigore
Sound Bounce
Rhona Togher
Kate McLaughlin of POP
We Got POP
Kate McLaughlin
TechSixtyFour
Colleen Wong
Caritta Seppa
Tespack
Caritta Seppa

Meet the Jury