The Romanian event of the Central European Startup Awards (CESA) 2018 announced its winners on September 19. The event awarded the best technology-based startups and the most active entrepreneurs in this industry, in 13 categories.

Thus, Spherik Accelerator was the big winner of the Best Accelerator or Incubator category. Spherik brings together technology, education and investment opportunities, with the mission of improving the local startup ecosystem and the growth of startups that are growing internationally.

Meanwhile, Dalia’s Book (Cartea Daliei), an NGO that aims to promote education among all children through technology, won the Best Social Impact Startup award. Also, BittWatt, a solution for the optimization of transactions involving energy and its use as a currency, got the big prize in the Best Blockchain Startup category.

The Best Coworking Space award went to Nod Makerspace - the coworking space endowed with production workshops for creative industries, while Nutritio, an app that makes the activity of dieticians and nutritionists more efficient so they can help more patients reach their objectives in a shorter amount of time, won the Best Biotech Startup award.

Meanwhile, the Best AI / Machine Learning Startup prize went to VisageCloud, Instant Factoring took the Best Fintech Startup award, and Ridesafe Technology won the Best IoT Startup prize. VisageCloud is an end-to-end face recognition and classification solution while Instant Factoring is the first Romanian fintech platform for online factoring. Ridesafe Technology is an IoT platform and a mobile app designed to provide more safety to motorcyclists.

Also, CargoPlanning, a digital marketplace dedicated to the organization of freight transport and the planning of logistics activities by factories and warehouses, was the winner of the Best Newcomer category.

The winner of the Female Role Model of the Year category was Xenia Muntean, co-founder and CEO of Planable, a collaboration platform for social media teams, while the Investor of the Year award went to Matei Dumitrescu – vice-president of the Techangels investors association, part of the largest CEE accelerator for impact startups – the Investment-Ready Academy in Vienna, a global mentor and investor for startups in Romania and the region, as well as in Silicon Valley or Brazil.

Alexandru Iliescu, CEO and co-founder of language-learning app Mondly, got the Founder of the Year Award. Meanwhile, Instant Factoring also took the award for Startup of the Year.

Central European Startup Awards is one of the most important startup competitions in the region. It is organized locally in 10 Central and Eastern European countries and at a regional level. The official partner of this edition of the competition in Romania was Impact Hub Bucharest.

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Irina Marica, irina.marica@romania-insider.com