Where are we now?
We received nearly 50 applications from countries all over the world, looking to make an impact in many different social spheres. It has been a humbling and inspiring experience to read through the applications and hear from the passionate voices behind these ideas. Some of them really are life-changing initiatives in the truest sense of the word - the true spirit of entrepreneurship and making a difference.
It has been a real labour of love as we completed an in-depth selection process, and we left no stone unturned as we narrowed it down to our final 10 startups. It was important to balance a whole range of factors to choose tech startups that are not only creating something positive for society but are also a good match with our skills and capabilities so that we as a company can make a meaningful difference.
Many people have been instrumental in this initiative - a full company initiative engaging all of our offices. One of our Product Managers - Marko Jukic has been instrumental in running this process - from meeting, evaluating, setting scope and understanding the needs to mapping out what we can provide. We included input from every area in our organisation, and even reached out to our parent company, Nordic Delta Group to ensure that we use the full breadth of the experiences and competencies we have both within startups and tech.
How will this work?
We do not aim to kick off all 10 startups in one go, rather our aim is to stagger them throughout the first half of 2024 depending on what skillsets are available alongside the needs and focus of the startup. We aim to have completed the scope for all 10 startups by the summer. With that said, this is the very first time we are running an initiative like this, and there are bound to be some unexpected challenges along the way. We are investing time and experience in these startups and using knowledge to change the world for the better.
Which startups have been chosen?
When selecting the startups, we made considerable effort to balance areas that startups operate in (environment, education, legal, e-commerce, mental health, healthcare, etc) alongside regions of the world they are located in (Europe, Africa, Asia). We are also really proud that at least half of the chosen startups are founded or co-founded by female entrepreneurs.
Which countries are represented?
We are really proud to have garnered such an international interest, and the chosen startups represent 8 different countries spanning 3 continents. From Africa, we have Benin, Nigeria and Ghana represented. Europe provides 4 of our startups from the UK, Sweden, Slovenia and Macedonia. Asia is also on the map with one of our startups from the UAE.
Which areas do they focus on?
Unemployment, Food scarcity, Legal, Education, Environmental, Healthcare and Mental health
Which startups will receive the support of tretton37?
In alphabetical order:
Name: Ahiyoyo
Location: Benin 🇧🇯
Pitch: A marketplace site with a focus on helping the un(der)employed make additional income by selling products. The company also provides fulfillment services to increase mutual trust to help the unemployed make an income in a safe way (e-commerce).
They need help with adding new features to their marketplace platform, such as an accounting module to reduce the time spent on reconciling payments. They also need to make the platform more performant in difficult network conditions.
It’s important to know that many people in Africa do not have official jobs and support themselves by selling what they make at home. This helps families create income by ensuring that sellers get paid and that buyers receive a product that they are satisfied with. Ahiyoyo has created 2000 deliveries in 2 years and has 800 customers. Logistics are also provided by the platform.
What kind of skills are they looking for? Frontend, ideally somebody with Wordpress experience.
Name: Aliments
Location: Benin 🇧🇯
Pitch: An online marketplace for farmers in Benin that aims to help local farmers sell their crops to restaurants and larger sales to families of various crops, and also provides transportation. It connects farmers directly to end buyers, which helps them get a fair income and prevents food scarcity as they can have a more predictable income.
They need help creating a better mobile experience for their customers, either on their website or maybe even through a mobile application. On top of that, they could also use numerous features and performance improvements on their platform.
Since 2021, they have had more than 300 customers, with over 2,000 deliveries made, and a hundred producers to whom they have paid out over $50,000 since 2021.
What kind of skills are they looking for? Frontend developer, ideally somebody with Wordpress experience.
Name: Zuputo
Location: Ghana 🇬🇭
Pitch: A platform that enables easy, fast, affordable access to legal help for tech startups and individuals. 100% female founders.
Zuputo is a startup at an early stage with a lot of product ideas, so they would like help from an experienced product manager to help them structure and prioritise their opportunity roadmap.
Africa has recently seen a surge in tech startups in Kenya, Egypt, Uganda, and South Africa especially. Ghana relies on small businesses to grow their economy and enabling startups to access affordable legal help helps Ghana’s economy. They have been around since August 2023 and are starting to get their first users.
What kind of skills are they looking for? Product Management.
Name: EarthCare
Location: Macedonia 🇲🇰
Pitch: Driving environmental change through data, founded by two environmental activists, this company has the most extensive environmental and climate data that enables companies to make better decisions that drive real change.
Earthcare needs help to migrate from Digital Ocean to AWS and make a more robust architecture that will provide better performance for calculations over large data sets.
This is a Techstars supported startup. The founders want to create change and while having an app targeted towards end consumers did not create any change, just shared information, they are now pivoting and targeting businesses with the hope of creating real change for the end consumers.
What kind of skills are they looking for? DevOps, Cloud engineer.
Name: Iko Africa
Location: Nigeria 🇳🇬
Pitch: Enabling African literacy by offering local authors a place to publish their work and encourage readers to read local literature.
Iko is already operating as a website, but they want help to create a mobile app built with the React Native framework. The initial goal of the app is to create a nice reading experience.
Emmanuel wanted to become a writer but could not because writing is not considered a profession that can support you in Nigeria, so he became a lawyer. Alongside his group of childhood friends - who used to have their book club - they are now changing how people read and write. Emmanuel is hoping that becoming an author will be a real possibility in Africa, through focusing on and improving the reading culture. Has 2100 users.
What kind of skills are they looking for? TBD
Name: Datatera
Location: Sweden 🇸🇪
Pitch: Using data loops to help improve Swedish healthcare (shifting focus from “did you get a treatment” to “have you been satisfied with your treatment”). 100% female founders.
Their primary need is to explore how they could improve their ML/AI capabilities to leverage the data in a better way. Additionally, they would also like to improve the UX of the Datatera platform's dashboard. This includes visualisation and presentation of data and insights. The founders are super technical, and about to start a pilot with Capio.
What kind of skills are they looking for? Data scientist who has data analytics and an AI/ML background with coding skills, preferably in Python. (primary need). A frontend developer with web application development coding skills (secondary need).
Name: Plussa
Location: Sweden 🇸🇪
Pitch: An app that helps parents with their mental health. Female founder.
Plussa tackles the mental well-being of parents and focuses on helping them to feel better both at home and at work. By combining proven psychology methods alongside AI, they hope to make support for parents much more accessible to a wider audience. They have several thousand users and more than 100 monthly active users and are excited to use AI in the process.
They are betting on focusing the user experience towards an AI chatbot interface that would guide users through the content available in the application based on their needs expressed through conversation. Their top priority is getting this right both from a user interface point of view as well as implementing the AI of course.
What kind of skills are they looking for? Depending on the challenge chosen: #1: AI specialist or #2: UX design/research
Name: Ecocentric
Location: UAE 🇦🇪
Pitch: They want to replace all packaging of any food or other deliveries with reusable packaging. They have developed the first iteration of the solution, including a web-based back office and a mobile app. They need guidance with testing the usability and the impact of their solution, as they have not done a lot of user research or market testing. Female founder.
The founders, a married couple, have put all their life savings into creating the packaging and the app while having little experience with tech products and require a lot of guidance in that aspect.
What kind of skills are they looking for? A possible combination of UX research, Product management, QA and engineering.
Name: Iguru Therapies
Location: Uganda 🇺🇬
Pitch: A speech therapist trying to enable access to rehabilitation services in Uganda. 100% female founders.
This is a startup at an early stage with many product ideas, so they would like help from an experienced product manager to help them structure and prioritise their opportunity roadmap and explore how their ideas can be validated.
Mercy is a speech therapist who noticed how hard it is to find a therapist in Uganda. There are not many, or they might live very far away. She wants to help people by making sure they can find a therapist and access help easier and faster.
What kind of skills are they looking for? Product Management
Name: Tablerone
Location: Slovenia/UK 🇸🇮🇬🇧
Pitch: No more tab anxiety for people with ADHD (and those who would like to feel organised).
Tablerone is a browser extension that saves tabs and time. It does what modern browsers should do - but don’t. It enables users to close and continue sessions at a later date, batch process URLs, browse collectively, and organise a lifetime of browsing history into a digital library.
It has over 17000 users and is a very engineering-focused company. They have outlined two main initiatives they could use help with:
- research solutions and build a proof of concept for a mobile companion app,
- consult on limitations and opportunities of different tech stacks (native Swift & Java VS React Native)
What kind of skills are they looking for? Mobile development or Data Engineer
So, there we have the 10 startups that we will be working closely with over the next few months. What this written article perhaps doesn’t get across is the passion of the faces behind these startups. Startups are where true innovation can be found, with many passionate individuals focused on a dream of making an impact in the world and contributing to making something better.
Some of the collaborations have already kicked off, and we will let you know how things move along as we navigate 2024. So, keep your eyes and ears peeled on our social media channels and our website to follow how it goes for these changemakers.
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