Nigeria’s Ladda falls short as Malaysian Fintech, Finology wins $500,000 Seedstars World Competition

Nigerian investment tech startup, Ladda has fallen short in its quest to win the Seedstars World Competition 2020/21. Led by Tosin Olaseinde, the fintech startup had emerged one of the finalists in the running to clinch the grand prize of $500,000 in equity investment.

Malaysian fintech startup, Finology won the competition’s $500,000 top prize after almost a year-long virtual run. The startup enables the seamless distribution of credit and simplifies access to financial products via its proprietary API technology.

The five (5) finalists included startups from five regions: two representatives from Africa – Ladda (Nigeria) and Fulfillment Bridge (Tunisia), two from Asia – Finology (Malaysia) and IMAN (Uzbekistan), as well as Pegasi (Venezuela).

Each of the finalists had been shortlisted from over 5,000 startups which applied to the competition across emerging startup ecosystems in Latin America, Africa, Middle East, Eastern and Central Europe and Asia.

Ladda had pitched its solution alongside other startups to the competition’s jury members Salman T. Jaffrey, CIO of Wa’ed Ventures, Charlie Graham-Brown, CIO of Seedstars and Shannon Kala-yana-mitr, CEO of 5G Catalyst Technologies and Advisor at Gobi partners.

Since 2013, the Seedstars World Competition has grown to be one of the largest startup competitions in emerging markets, but saw this year’s edition hosted virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic situation.

Nigeria’s Ladda, which launched in 2020, continues to democratise access to investment including mutual funds and stocks for retail investors. This was a missed funding opportunity for the budding fintech startup.

Other prizes were awarded to the innovative startups tackling different sectors such as edtech, ICT and childhood development.

Speaking on this year’s global winner, Finology, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Seedstars Alisée de Tonnac said:

“Finology showed us a lot of promise in their mission to bridge together financial institutions and individuals by making financial products accessible for everyone. The Seedstars team believes that they will effectively help lead the way forward in the ever increasing digitization of the financial sector.”