21 April 2017

Meet the 2017 Ye! Global Awards Finalists!

The Ye! Community is excited to announce the 2017 Ye! Global Award Finalists! In total, we’ve received 177 applications and nominations from 48 countries this year. 10 finalists have been chosen. The winners of the Award will be announced during the Global Inclusion Awards Ceremony held in Berlin on May 3^rd.

Meet our 10 finalists! We hope you find their business endeavors as impressive as we do. Which one is your favorite?

Amira Cheniour, 29

I.T.Grapes (Technology) | Country: Tunisia

I.T.Grapes is ingenuity in action. Amira and her team saw a need for the Tunisian agriculture to use water better—for the benefit of local farmers and the country, which found itself amid an extreme drought. Their innovative solution, Seabex, is an e-monitoring and automation system enabling smarter irrigation: It uses smart sensors to monitor and send key environmental parameters of a farm to a cloud-based server, which aggregates the data and sends commands to activate/deactivate the irrigation equipment against the optimal conditions that are unique to each farm. The software offers farmers a web and mobile application with which they can monitor and manage the farms remotely. Seabex is estimated to increase agricultural production by 20%, improve produce quality while reducing farms’ water consumption by 30%.

Caritta Seppä, 29

Tespack (Energy) | Country: Finland

With the ambitious goal of making everyone energy independent, the co-founder of Tespack, Caritta and her team have created commercially ready smartwear products to solve the problems of battery life, charging capacity, and connectivity. By combining technology and premium design, Tespack is providing one of the most competitive mobile energy solutions on the market. One of their distinguishing innovations is an ultra-fast charging technology that allows users to charge a 2800mAh power bank in 6 minutes, compared to 4~6 hours that it normally requires to charge similar power banks. Powered by this technology, Tespack has created Smartpacks including fast power banks and solar smart helmets that can be used by rescue forces and outdoor professionals. The team holds more than five IPs on their products and technology. Currently Tespack’s smartwear products are already being sold by retail giants such as Vodafone, Intersport and Scandinavian Outdoor Store.

Elia Timotheo, 29

East Africa Fruits Farm & Co Ltd. (Agriculture) | Country: Tanzania

Elia is tackling the challenge of post-harvest crop loss in Tanzania. Every year approximately 4.5 million tons of produce is wasted in Tanzania (230 million tons in Sub-Saharan Africa) due to improper methods of transportation and a lack of sufficient storage facilities. East Africa Fruits Farm uses cold chain logistics to increase the shelf life of fresh fruits and vegetables. By aggregating fresh produce, offering fair prices to farmers, and processing and distributing products to local markets, East Africa Fruits Farm has created a sustainable business model. The enterprise has captured major wholesalers, who now buy locally instead of importing the same fruits and vegetables from aboard. It also offers an opportunity for small-scale farmers to franchise on arable land, giving local farmers increased independence and resilience to seasonal scarcity. The company has constructed a 1,500 square meters storage and processing facility which is one of the largest fresh produce facility in the country and acquired refrigerated trucks with a capacity to transport 700,000kgs of produce on annual basis.

Fredrick Matress, 27

Honey Products Industries (Agriculture) | Country: Malawi

By addressing a two-fold problem - a struggling honey industry and high youth unemployment, Honey Products Industries is providing sustainable solutions to commercializing smallholder honey production and creating job opportunities in Malawi. Not only does Fredrick train local youths in business, who then go on to run franchises and aggregate honey for his company, he also provides struggling or dormant beekeepers with agricultural consultancy and modern beekeeping equipment so they may once again become competitive. The company also teaches beekeepers sustainable farming techniques so that they can better conserve the environment and the bee populations. So far the company has established 20 mini franchises run by young people, employs seven fulltime employees and works with 2,500 beekeepers to supply high quality organic honey to Malawian households.

Judith Joan Walker, 27

African Clean Energy (Energy) | Country: Netherlands

Over 2 billion people in the world still cook over rudimentary cook stoves and open fires. These stoves and open fires kill over 4 million people annually due to smoke inhalation. ACE aims at providing modern household energy solutions to people in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere in the developing world. Their smokeless biomass cookstove gasifies fuel, meaning no smoke is created and emissions are negligible while cooking, which is able to reduce biomass fuel use by approximately 70%.The battery is charged with a solar panel and powers a USB and DC port, which can be used to charge mobile devices and power an LED light. African Clean Energy has built a production facility in Lesotho that employs over 50 staff members. Currently the team have sold 40k+ clean cookstoves. They have also set up two micro-financing programs and have signed a micro-financing partnership in Uganda and are expanding distribution to Cambodia and Uganda as well as setting up a component consolidation warehouse in Vietnam.

Karim Dawood, 27

InterAct (Technology) | Country: Egypt

Karim is bringing technology to the classroom in an interactive and educational manner. The ed-tech startup’s first product, Touchizer, features a low-cost portable device with a software that, when connected to a computer and projector, can transform any surface into an interactive whiteboard. Seeing most interactive whiteboards available on the market are too expensive, InterAct wants to offer an affordable alternative to schools in the developing world. With their effective software solution, Karin and his team are able to remove the need to install the costly physical whiteboard and reduce the costs by as much as 50%. The startup has attracted interest of educators and is currently working on deploying its solutions through partnerships with major educational institutions in Egypt.

Mabel Suglo, 24

Eco Shoes (Consumer Products) | Country: Ghana

Eco Shoes is a social enterprise that manufactures and sells durable and versatile footwear made from 100% recycled materials. Noticing an excess of used tires strewn across her country, Mabel Suglo decided to put these old tires to use and make something beautiful. The company designs shoes made from up-cycled tires and fabric waste which are typically underutilized or disposed-off in an environmentally unfriendly manner. The company employs and trains out-of-work artisans who others find unemployable. For every shoe sold internationally, Eco Shoes donates $1 to the EPF Educational Empowerment Initiative, a charity that provides free brand new shoes to school children from deprived communities .So far the enterprise has hired 13 workers with disabilities and provided 10000 children with free shoes through the match making donation scheme.

Mario Jordan “Magellan” Fetalino III, 25

Acudeen Technologies (Technology)| Country: Philippines

Acudeen is revolutionizing the way businesses make financing decisions. The fintech startup is solving cashflow and working capital constraints faced by SMEs. : It offers an online facility where businesses can sell their receivables at a competitive discounted price to Acudeen's financing partners.Its online facility can liquidate invoices, PDCs, checks of SMEs in 5 days or even as fast as within 24 hours upon request. The technology enables secure and user friendly subrogation and underwriting, allowing SMEs to obtain liquidity to reinvest and grow their businesses in a time efficient manner. Acudeen has established partnerships with major credit bureaus in the Philippines which gives them access to critical business information and payment behaviors data. It endeavors to foster a healthier working relationship between the supplier and the client and a more financially inclusive atmosphere in the Philippines.

Pietro Paolo Ganis, 29

Laboratori Fabrici SRL (Technology) | Country: Italy

Air pollution is a hot topic, but have you ever thought about air pollution indoors? That is where CLAIRY comes to the rescue. The team at Laboratori Fabrici have developed a product that not just purifies indoor air, but creates fresh, new air. The CLAIRY smart flowerpot with its technology enhances the abilities of plants to purify the indoor air by 8 to 10 times. CLAIRY connects to Wi-Fi and may be managed with a mobile application that provides: real-time pollution analysis, management of fan functions, status of the plant diagnostics, and temperature/humidity monitors. Through the app, CLAIRY can communicate with other smart home devices. The plant may also serve as a health assistant, giving people healthy tips and monitoring the indoor space while the homeowner is away. By coupling elegant design with an environmentally friendly solution, the CLAIRY products are gaining increasing popularity and demand. Pietro and his team have raised over 300,000 Euro through a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign in 2015. They are currently working on rolling out their products.

Momarr Mass Taal, 29

Tropingo Foods (Agriculture) | Country: Gambia

Tropingo Foods is an agro-processing and export business based in Gambia. The company aims to create sustainable access to markets for local producers through developing value chains and producing value added goods for export, with a focus on the groundnut and mango sector. By utilizing efficient processing practices and operations model, Tropingo Foods is contributing to developing a vibrant, professional groundnut sector in Gambia, a sector which constitutes the country’s key exports (5.3% of GDP) but has seen decreased production over the last 30 years. Tropingo Foods applies dehydration techniques in processing mangos, which reduces the weight and space required to store and transport the fruit and allows it to remain fresh for extended periods of time (due to limited access to market and poor storage facilities, it is estimated that 80% of mango produced locally is wasted in post-harvest). The company currently employs 180 staff, most of which are women, Tropingo Foods has been recognized locally and internationally for its practices and their impact on rural communities, youth, and women.

More about Ye! Global Awards

The Ye! Global Award is designed to celebrate an outstanding young entrepreneur who is successfully running his/her own enterprise and is making a positive impact on society. The 2017 Ye! Global Awards are held in collaboration with Germany’s G20 Presidency.