Final in Berlin
Berlin, 25 April 2024 – The startup PARTICIPAYED is the winner of the Startup-Champs 2024. The company won the “Startup Champs goes FinTech” pitch competition. The event was part of the Fintech Festival FIBE Berlin, which took place for the first time in Berlin’s CityCube. A high-calibre jury of female investors selected four regional winners and one overall winner from three companies from each of the leading German startup strongholds Berlin, Munich, Hamburg and Cologne. Berlin was represented by the startups NAO, U Impact and tilta. All three companies impressed with exciting pitches. In the end, tilta won the city title – and will now represent Berlin at the international startup conference Slush in Helsinki in November 2024.
The Startup Champs were chosen for the fifth time this year. The competition is the result of close cooperation between Berlin Partner, KölnBusiness, Hamburg Invest and Munich Startup/WERK1 and serves to network the respective ecosystems in the German startup hotspots of Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg and Munich. The approximately 9,000 startups based there have an investment volume of almost eight billion euros. Together with other startups from all over Germany, they have developed into an important economic and innovation factor in recent years, which is becoming increasingly important both nationally and internationally. The pitch competition helps to increase the visibility of dynamic startups and is therefore an important impetus for the further development of Germany as a startup location.
The motto of this year’s competition was “Fintech” and was thematically broadly interpreted. This meant that all startups that combine technology and finance and thus offer their own target group innovative added value were able to take part. The Berlin startups NAO, U Impact and tilta were also among the twelve finalists. While NAO offers access to innovative and exclusively curated investments for long-term wealth creation, U Impact specialises in making the complex world of sustainable finance more accessible to the general public through data, analysis and tools. Tilta, in turn, provides marketplaces and e-commerce platforms with an ‘end-to-end infrastructure’ that enables them to process credit-supported payment flows and close liquidity gaps for customers.
As the Berlin regional winner, tilta can now claim a ticket for the international startup conference Slush, which will be held in Helsinki from 20 to 21 November, as well as a pitch spot in the FIBE format “Späti-Talk” this Thursday, 25 April 2024, and look forward to the regional prize from the Berliner Sparkasse. This includes three VIP tickets for the WLOUNGE Tech Award Gala, one of the largest networks for digital startups and scale-ups.