The Underdog Tech Award 2024 shortlist recognizes founders of the best tech startups launched outside of the world’s major tech hubs and startup communities.
The winners will be announced on 1st of April.
Chandramouli Samatham, Founder and CEO of Caare, a Visakhapatnam based start-up, has been shortlisted among 20 finalists from around the world for the Underdog Tech Awards 2024. Being selected from 294 applicants and representing India on a global level is an incredible achievement.
The Underdog Tech Award is a new international prize for founders of the best tech startups located outside of major tech hubs and startup communities. The award has been established to support successful technology startups that are thriving despite facing challenges such as limited resources, lack of access to funding, as well as inability to attend important industry events due to their location.
Ekaterina Smirnova, Head of The Underdog Tech Award says: “The Underdog Tech Award is a business award for the ‘underdogs’ of the tech startup world, which is what inDrive once was. All too often we hear about companies from the same global capital hubs and their founders, who have graduated from the same Ivy League universities. With this award we want to support companies from other regions and for their founders, who might not have graduated from Harvard, to believe in themselves and to know that they too can change the world. Together we are building a more diverse and inclusive world, which takes into account the interests of many different communities and people, including those living in some of the world’s most remote places.”
The Underdog Tech Award has a total prize fund of $60,000, and recognizes the winners with a monetary reward and other assistance, including training from industry experts and PR support.
The panel of judges will include prominent tech entrepreneurs, members of academia and industry experts. Members of the jury include Fatma Nasujo, Global Head of Corporate Operations at Wasoko; Sean Kim, President and Chief Product Officer at Kajabi; Charles Eesley, Associate Professor and W.M. Keck Foundation Faculty Scholar in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University; Daniel Gándara, Vice President at MercadoLibre; Damla Buyuktaskin, Senior Regional Livelihoods and Economic Inclusion Officer for Asia Pacific Countries in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; and Arsen Tomsky, Founder and CEO of inDrive.
The Underdog Tech Award 2024 shortlist
1. Victor Juarez from Guatemala: Founder of TuConsejeria, a startup focused on providing comprehensive psychological and mental health support to the Hispanic community, and specifically women, youth, and young adults, tackling issues such as socialization, family, citizenship training, sexual education, prevention of violence (bullying), gender equality, and education, as well as helping users to open up about their mental health issues.
2. Basima Abdulrahman from Iraq: Founder and CEO of KESK, a startup building the first green energy platform in Iraq. KESK synergizes solar power and cloud computing technologies to build alternative energy projects and generate new revenues.
3. Elmira Safarova from Chile: Founder and CEO of Rarus Health, a digital ecosystem that helps to improve diagnostics, assist the families of children with rare genetic diseases and generate data to accelerate the development of drug and gene therapies.
4. Omar Ahmed Abdelwahed and Ibrahim Karim Eid from Egypt: Co-founders of Valify Solutions,an Egypt-based RegTech company specializing in digital identity infrastructure technology. Currently the market leader in Egypt, Valify offers its services to financial institutions, telecos, e-commerce platforms, as well as many others in various sectors.
5. Carlos Andrés García Iguarán from Colombia: Co-founder of Numera, a platform enabling companies to automate their accounting processes, making everyday tasks like sending and receiving invoices, settling taxes and payroll, and generating timely and reliable managerial reports from centralized data, simple.
6. Amos Muthoni Kimani, from Kenya: Founder and CEO of TausiApp, an application providing on-demand beauty services to customers who don’t have time to visit a salon or spa. With TausiApp, beauty professionals go direct to the customer’s location of choice, be that at home, work, or elsewhere.
7. Mostafa Dawoud from Egypt: Co-founder and CEO of Dentolize, a fully-customisable dental practice management solution that scales with clients’ needs and enables dentists to streamline their financial, clinical, and operational processes. Dentolize can also be used for managing patients, employees, other associates including insurance companies and suppliers, inventory and much more, without the need for additional software.
8. Roikhanatun Nafi’ah from Indonesia: Founder and CEO of Crustea, a startup leveraging eco-friendly aeration technology with smart IoT to support advanced aquaculture ecosystems, helping increase pond farmers’ productivity and reduce operational costs.
9. Chandramouli Samatham from India: Founder and CEO of Caare, a company on a mission to make basic healthcare accessible to rural and senior communities by offering a full spectrum of healthcare services via its online platform.
10. Ashraf Bacheet from Egypt: Founder of O7 Therapy, a startup revolutionizing access to mental health services through its digital platform and mobile app. O7 Therapy offers online therapy, corporate wellness programs, and psycho-educational resources, empowering Arabic-speaking people by building the Middle East’s largest mental health institution.
11. Royford Mutegi from Kenya: Co-founder and Head of Programs at Vermi-Farm Initiative, which aims to empower smallholder farmers with sustainable and innovative agri-tech solutions that increase crop yields and reduce water usage, while creating market linkages for their surplus produce.
12. Sadman Sadek from Bangladesh: Founder of Digital Innovation for Impact, a startup empowering smallholder farmers by providing them with valuable meteorological, agricultural, and technological insights that help them mitigate their exposure to climate risks. The team specializes in cutting-edge climate modeling, assessing agriculture vulnerabilities and anticipating long-term impacts, providing stakeholders with the foresight they need to make informed decisions.
13. Akhlad Mohamed Alabhar from Egypt: Founder and CEO of Egrobots, an agritech platform that enables farmers to produce more with fewer resources. Through data and analytics, their solution improves farm sustainability, reduces costs, and addresses food security challenges. Egrobots minimizes resource wastage, optimizes water and pesticide usage, and reduces chemical runoff.
14. Julian Garcia from Argentina: Founder of Wiolit, a company working to reduce food waste in institutional canteens by providing companies with a platform through which they can monitor their consumption and adjust production accordingly, empowering them to meet their CSR objectives.
15. Biplab Karki from USA: Founder of Hyperce, a startup providing innovative and personalized e-commerce solutions to businesses of all sizes, with a mission to address the challenges of traditional e-commerce technology by offering scalable, cost-effective, and highly customizable modern suite solutions that are easy to manage.
16. Mohamed Tarek Mohamed Abdelzaher from Egypt: Co-founder of P-vita, an innovative startup recycling agricultural waste to produce raw material for the cosmetics and food industry.
