Endeavor Selects 26 Entrepreneurs from 13 Countries at the 83rd International Selection Panel in Athens

Endeavor Nigeria Welcomes First Entrepreneurs

Endeavor selected 26 high-impact entrepreneurs leading 18 companies from 13 countries at the 83rd International Selection Panel (ISP) in Athens, held October 22-24, and hosted by Endeavor Greece. Endeavor now supports 1,768 entrepreneurs leading 1,106 companies in 33 markets around the world. At the ISP, Endeavor also welcomed the first two entrepreneurs supported by Endeavor Nigeria into the network, leading companies Cars45 and BitPesa (learn more below).

The ISP is the culmination of a rigorous multi-step selection process to identify innovative and driven entrepreneurs who are committed to advancing an ecosystem of entrepreneurship.

“Endeavor is all about identifying and supporting those select entrepreneurs who build and scale lasting businesses, create jobs, and mentor and inspire others. From the dedication of network members who lend their time and expertise to serve as panelists, to entrepreneurs who passionately pitch their companies, ISPs are the heart of that process,” said Endeavor CEO Linda Rottenberg. “We’re thrilled to count a new, diverse group of high-impact entrepreneurs among Endeavor’s growing worldwide network — and particularly excited to welcome our first Endeavor Entrepreneurs from Endeavor Nigeria!”

Over the course of the three-day event, panelists drawn from Endeavor’s extensive network of board members, mentors, supporters, and experienced Endeavor Entrepreneurs, interview entrepreneur candidates about their businesses, evaluating them on their potential for high-impact growth, and deliberating on which candidates should be selected to become Endeavor Entrepreneurs.

Once selected, Endeavor Entrepreneurs gain access to comprehensive customized services, including introductions to local and international business mentors and volunteers from Fortune 500 consulting firms who will help them address key needs.

Endeavor Entrepreneurs have had a significant track record of creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, generating billions of dollars in revenues, and building sustainable growth models in their home countries.

Endeavor will host the remaining ISP of 2018 in Cape Town (Stellenbosch) on December 11-13.

Learn more about the companies and entrepreneurs selected below.

BRAZIL

Company: Liv Up
Entrepreneurs: Victor Santos and Henrique Castellani
Description: Liv Up is a direct-to-consumer health food brand offering ready-to-heat meals and snacks delivered to customers’ doorsteps. Liv Up handles all stages of the food value chain – from production and packaging to sales, distribution, and delivery. Liv Up’s main product, ready-to-heat meals, are ready to serve within 5 minutes, cost an average of $6.50 per meal, and are delivered in vacuum-sealed and flash-frozen packages to preserve the taste, texture, and nutrients of the food without the use of preservatives. Liv Up currently sells its meals to customers in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte.

COLOMBIA

Company: Home Burgers
Entrepreneurs: Pablo Velez and Camilo Pelaez
Description: Home Burgers is a fast-casual restaurant chain that combines the price, speed and convenience of a fast-food restaurant with the high-quality products and experience of a full-service restaurant. Home Burgers offers a very simple but high-quality menu comprised of three types of burgers: a classic beef burger, a vegetarian burger, and a fried chicken sandwich. The company launched its first restaurant in September 2015, and has since opened 8 restaurants and 4 dark kitchens in Bogotá and Medellín.

Company: Merqueo
Entrepreneur: Miguel McAllister
Description: Merqueo is an online supermarket based in Colombia. Unlike other grocery delivery platforms, Merqueo works directly with suppliers to purchase goods, holds its own inventory, and employs its own delivery team.

EGYPT

Company: Natura Agro
Entrepreneur: Amr Elmeniawy
Description: Natura Agro helps Egypt’s microclimates grow and process fresh, canned, roasted, and ready-to-eat fruits and vegetables that are white labeled and exported for clients or sold to large grocery chains under the Natura Agro brand. With a growing European demand for exotic fruits, Natura’s main export markets include Netherlands, Czech Republic and Germany. As the global fruit and vegetable market climbs to US$240B by 2019, Natura will continue to innovate by sourcing additional exotic fruits and building a new production facility.

Company: WellSpring
Entrepreneur: Maged Fawzy
Description: In Egypt, camps and other alternative education opportunities are stuck in the past, relying on undertrained counselors, outdated equipment, and mundane curriculum. As a result, these small faith-based and commercial camps fail to provide formative character-building experiences for Egypt’s youth. WellSpring leverages highly trained counselors, an accredited, age-specific curriculum, and state-of-the-art facilities to provide unique learning experiences for Egypt’s youth.

GREECE

Company: Oseven Telematics
Entrepreneur: Vassilis Stivaktakis
Description: OSeven, a pioneer in safe & eco mobility, transforms the smartphone, the leading cause of distracted driving & traffic accidents, from trouble-maker into problem-solver with its mobile app that evaluates driving behavior. Using advanced machine learning algorithms, the app identifies mobile use, harsh events (like braking and accelerating), speeding and helps drivers to improve and reduce insurance, leasing and fuel costs.

INDONESIA

Company: SaleStock
Entrepreneur: Lingga Madu
Description: SaleStock is an online, affordably-priced fast fashion (apparel, accessories, and cosmetics) company that focuses on 2nd and 3rd tier cities in Indonesia, where access to fashion is limited and expensive. SaleStock delivers to customers’ homes and offers cash-on-delivery along with an innovative concept of “try first, pay later.” The company leverages AI and machine learning algorithms that scrape data from fashion blogs, Instagram, Facebook, etc. to predict trends and manage inventory.

Company: Qlue
Entrepreneur: Raditya Maulana Rusdi
Description: Indonesian governments struggle to respond promptly to municipal issues such as criminal activity, flooding, traffic congestion, and construction projects. At the same time, factories and property developers find it difficult to manage their facilities and leverage location-based data for actionable insights (on average, only 10% of a company’s location data is used to drive business insights). Enter Qlue, a platform providing governments, enterprises, and property developers with live, actionable insights based on data collected from IoT and GIS-location systems.

ITALY

Company: Artemest
Entrepreneurs: Marco Credendino and Marco Deseri
Description: Artemest connects the world of Italian handcrafted goods to the new global luxury enthusiast. Luxury Italian craftsmanship is currently difficult for foreign consumers to access, since artisans do not have the expertise to effectively market their products internationally. Artemest offers a curated online marketplace for these artisans to sell their work.

Company: Velasca
Entrepreneurs: Jacopo Sebastio and Enrico Casati
Description: Velasca sells high quality Italian-made men’s leather shoes and accessories at a third of the price of competitors by cutting intermediaries and selling direct-to-consumer. As an omnichannel player, Velasca sells both online and offline through its three “bottegas” in Milan, Rome, and Turin. These shops allow customers to interact with the brand, try on a size and then order their desired color and style “online” at the store and receive it at home within 24 hours. The company recently closed a Series A round and will use the funds to open more locations, including London and Paris.

LEBANON

Company: Toters
Entrepreneurs: Tamim Khalfa and Nael Halwani
Description: Consumers now expect new levels of convenience, transparency, and speed from the companies they order from, but traditional merchants struggle to meet these new service standards. Toters is a digital ordering platform and delivery service that connects merchants and consumers. Toters enables participating businesses to reach more consumers than ever before through its proprietary technology and dispatch system, including those that did not previously have their own delivery fleets.

MALAYSIA

Company: CXS International
Entrepreneur: Jan Lambrechts
Description: The average fresh college graduate makes a lower monthly salary than the average Uber driver in many markets; today’s universities do not prepare students for tomorrow’s ever-changing workforce. At the same time, training, managing, and retaining existing employees is a challenge for every organization. CXS International provides big data and analytical solutions to educational institutions, governments, and enterprises to better match incoming talent and better engage existing talent. With 20 years of data shaping it’s AI profiling, training, and management tools, CXS has improved employment for 12M users across 595 clients in 16 countries. CXS aims to bridge the gap between education and employability globally.

NIGERIA

Company: BitPesa
Entrepreneur: Elizabeth Rossiello
Description: BitPesa is a digital foreign exchange and payment platform that offers businesses a fast, easy and low-cost way to make payments to and from Africa. Many businesses trading across African borders face a significant lack of liquidity when it comes to buying/selling African currencies. Due to the continent’s weak financial infrastructure, trade between Africa’s currencies is typically inefficient, time-consuming and expensive. By creating liquidity in every major African currency, BitPesa is able to reduce settlement time from 2-14 days to just hours at one-third the cost.

Company: Cars45
Entrepreneur: Etop Ikpe
Description: Cars45 is disrupting Africa’s used car industry by bringing a world-class buying & selling experience to Nigeria. Cars45 transforms the buying/selling process for both consumers and dealers using proprietary data and technology to position itself as the market’s first independent used car valuation expert and offers a two-sided (C2B) marketplace for used cars.

SAUDI ARABIA

Company: Foodics
Entrepreneurs: Mosab AlOthmani and Ahmad AlZaini
Description: Foodics offers a cloud-based all-in-one restaurant management system on an iPad that provides services ranging from electronic menus to inventory management to data analytics on restaurant and kitchen performance. Since its inception in 2014, Foodics has grown to provide solutions to restaurants in Saudi Arabia, Philippines, Turkey, Hong Kong, Morocco, and Sudan.

TURKEY

Company: Binnaz
Entrepreneurs: Sertac Tasdelen and Kaya Diker
Description: With its mobile application, Faladdin, and an online fortune teller marketplace, Binnaz Abla connects over 1 million individuals to fortune-based entertainment every day. Faladdin is available in Turkish, English, and Arabic, and has received over 10 million downloads, ranking it as the #2 entertainment app in Turkey by the Google Play store.

URUGUAY

Company: TiendaMIA
Entrepreneurs: Juan Pablo Pereira and Mario Colla
Description: E-commerce giants like Amazon, Walmart, and eBay can only sell a small percentage of their inventory to customers in Latin America due to logistical challenges and complicated legislation. TiendaMIA is a cross-border e-commerce marketplace that allows customers in Latin America to shop for items that are only sold in the U.S. TiendaMIA leverages technology to localize its website in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Brazil to ensure that products are compliant with local laws, taxes, and more, guaranteeing, unlike competitors, that the product will be delivered.