Right after the great achievement of Codacy at the Web Summit, here we have another fantastic news for the Portuguese Startup Scene.
Big App FUND powered by Facebook is a European competition that aims to find the “most promising” mobile apps. The big winner has been announced last Thursday and our Portuguese-based UKADEMICS took the top spot receiving a £150k investment! As runner-ups we can find UK startups Briefly and YOOVi. The competition got 425 entries from over 27 countries.
Big App was launched by Worth Capital that looks to develop innovative apps by providing mentoring and a share of £350,000 investment via the well-known equity crowdfunding platform Seedrs.
On Worth Capital’s website, we can read the following statement from Paul Ephremsen, one of the co-founders:
“The talent we saw in the judging room on Monday was exceptional and it was a very challenging task choosing just three winners. Worth Capital are all about discovering young entrepreneurs across various sectors and mentoring them to shape and launch their businesses to achieve great things. It’s clear that we’ve unearthed some bright and promising entrepreneurs in the UKADEMICS, YOOVi and Briefly teams and we’re excited about what the future holds for them.
Partnering our unique business model with Seedrs not only allows us to raise necessary funding for these startups but also gives the crowd reassurance that we’re selecting the very best businesses to invest in”
But what’s UKADEMICS afterwards?
UKADEMICS Founders – Left to Right: André Rosendo and Vako Imnaishvili
On their Facebook page they describe their service as a place where international students can apply to any university or college in the UK. Students can chose from 35,000+ undergraduate degrees. In an alternative way, we can also say that it’s essentially “the Booking.com” for college degrees – a fast way to search and apply to thousands of universities around the world.
Among other features, UKADEMICS might display the personal probability of a student to be accepted and helps them to take the right decision based on important university metrics like: Student Satisfaction, Average Salary after Graduation or Employability Rate. But that’s not all, unlike anything else out there, through UKADEMICS, students from European Union can even apply for 100% tuition fee funding from the British Government.
“Thank you to all the investors for recognising UKADEMICS, the first international search and application platform built for revolutionising student mobility. Our first version is already running for UK Colleges and Universities, and in 2015 we can look to the USA and even China as a destination. We see great things ahead and have a fantastic team to achieve it.”
– André Rosendo, co-founder of UKADEMICS
“The education industry is in desperate need for tech disruption. More than five million students go to study abroad each year and they have no proper tech solution that will guide them through.”
– Vako Imnaishvili, co-founder of UKADEMICS
The pitch day was held at Facebook’s London HQ in front of a very demanding jury panel:
Big App judges – Left to Right: Alex Johns (Co-Founder, Worth Capital), George Berkowski (Co-Founder and CEO, IceCream – “How To Build A Billion Dollar App” author), Adam Harrison (Business Marketing EMEA, Facebook), Matthew Cushen (Co-Founder, Worth Capital), Paul Ephremsen (Co-Founder, Worth Capital), Ted Nash (Co–Founder and CEO Tapdaq – the first teenager to hit 1M downloads on the App Store).
Photo Credits: Worth Capital