South Summit came to its end after three long days of celebration in Madrid.
The eleventh edition of this event, co-organized by IE University, managed to bring together in-person great representatives of the Spanish and global entrepreneurial ecosystem at La Nave de Madrid.
Furthermore, it completely filled the space for all three days with attendance figures reminiscent of pre-pandemic times.
This was confirmed by María Benjumea, founding president of South Summit: “Out of the approximately 20,000 attendees who have attended this eleventh edition.
6,500 have been entrepreneurs. 2,000 investors with an investment portfolio of over $326 billion, and 650 top-level speakers.
In addition, more than 175,000 high-value connections have been made during these three days.”
Fintech is kicking again
On the final day of the event, the Startup Competition concluded with an awards ceremony honoring the winners.
This competition attracted around one hundred startups from 21 countries, who had the opportunity to showcase their projects to over 300 investment funds.
The top prize went to Uelz, a startup based in Valencia.
Uelz was co-founded by Xandra Etxabe and María Luke, who emerged as the victorious entrepreneurs.
The startup helps save technical implementation and maintenance costs for payment platforms by automating all customer subscriptions and one-time payments in seconds.
Uelz started its activity in 2022 with the support of The Venture City and Angels Capital funds.
Just like in the previous year, the attention is once again on the Fintech industry.
Last year, the Madrid-based startup Payflow won the prize.
Additionally, Payflow stated that they had accelerated their growth with the support of Wayra:
“Being winners of South Summit marked a before and after for us. The recognition has been enormous and has allowed us to boost sales for our company. We have expanded operations to two new countries in the past year – Portugal and Peru – launched our flexible remuneration card, and brought financial well-being to over 350,000 workers worldwide,” said Benoit Menardo and Avinash Sukhwani, Co-founders of Payflow.
Other Awards
During the course of the day, the awards recognizing the most disruptive, scalable, sustainable startups, and those with the best team have also been announced.
Most disruptive: Hensilki Onego Bio, the Finnish startup that has deciphered the code to produce egg white protein without chickens through precision fermentation.
Most scalable: Build38, the German startup that offers reinforcement and protection for apps to secure users’ personal data against potential cybersecurity threats.
Best team: Legit.Health, is a Basque project developed by the University of the Basque Country (UPV) that is transforming clinical practice in dermatology through its AI platform.
Most sustainable: Lumio, the Madrid-based startup that contributes to the development of 100% sustainable communities by providing the opportunity to install, share, or consume sustainable energy.