After almost a year-long virtual run, the Seedstars World Competition 2020/21 has announced Malaysian fintech start-up Finology as this year’s global winner.

Seedstars, the Swiss-based investment holding with a mission to impact people’s lives in emerging markets, annually holds the Seedstars World Competition to scout for the most promising start-ups in the Asia, Africa, CEE, MENA, and LATAM regions.

Since 2013, the Seedstars World Competition has grown to be the largest start-up competition in emerging markets, but the unique pandemic situation led to the online transformation of this year’s edition.

Five start-ups from Africa were among the group of 20 semi-finalists who had advanced to the final stage of the competition, with the number being narrowed down to five start-ups who went through to the grand finale.

As overall winner, Finology will receive the grand prize of $500K in equity investment. The start-up enables seamless access to financial products via the use of proprietary technology and digital distribution channels.

“Finology showed us a lot of promise in their mission to bridge together financial institutions and individuals by making financial products accessible for everyone,” says co-founder and co-CEO of Seedstars, Alisée de Tonnac.

“The Seedstars team believe that they will effectively help lead the way forward in the ever increasing digitisation of the financial sector. A big congratulations from Seedstars to the Finology team!”

Over 5000 start-up applications were received for the competition.

Each start-up took turns pitching to jury members Salman T. Jaffrey, CIO of Wa’ed Ventures, Shannon Kala-yana-mitr, CEO of 5G Catalyst Technologies and advisor at Gobi Partners, and Charlie Graham-Brown, CIO of Seedstars.

Finology CEO Jared Lim expressed his excitement on the team’s win: “We’re all about using technology to deliver financial services to people in ways that are more meaningful to their lives. We look forward to rolling out more product offerings in emerging Asia that have been designed around a seamless delivery experience.”

The five finalists of this year’s competition included start-ups from five regions:

• Fulfillment Bridge (Tunisia) – A cloud based global e-commerce logistics platform offering warehousing in four continents, fulfilment, shipping, return management and more.

• Finology (Malaysia) – Finology enables seamless access to financial products via the use of technology and ready digital distribution channels.

• Ladda (Nigeria) – A start-up democratising access to investment for retail investors backed up by financial literacy.

• Pegasi (Venezuela) – Makes healthcare information accessible and useful for patients, physicians and healthcare service providers in the developing world.

• IMAN (Uzbekistan) – A marketplace that brings together merchants, shoppers, and investors at the point of sale using the principles of Islamic finance.

Other prizes were awarded to the innovative start-ups tackling different sectors.