The five winners of the Catapult: Kickstarter Fall 2021 fintech acceleration bootcamp have been announced by the LHoFT Foundation. These winners were picked from ten startups that went through a two-week programme before pitching their solutions in the hopes of winning €50,000 in subsidies to pursue development in Luxembourg.
The second edition of the Fintech acceleration bootcamp, Catapult: Kickstarter Fall 2021, concluded on Friday 26th of November with the cohort’s final pitches in front of a virtual audience and esteemed jury, with great support from the Luxembourg Finance Community.
Cent Finance, FUNDSaiQ, goscore+, Thread and Velotix are the five lucky winners of this Catapult: Kickstarter 2021, Fall edition.
Cent Finance – UK
Cent acts as the gateway to the growing world of Decentralised Finance (DeFi), it allows users to understand, explore and invest in digital assets, responsibly.
FUNDSaiQ – UK
FUNDSaiQ provides a SaaS based, machine learning powered, B2B platform for financial advisors, empowering them to identify and monitor the best performing mutual fund managers in the market.
goscore – Norway
Goscore+ brings a human credit scoring to private customers using modern ML technology and data enriched with PSD2 customer transactions.
Thread – France
Thread Labs developed an AI-powered collaborative investment re- search platform, specialised in integrating ESG in traditional equity research.
Velotix – Israel
The Velotix Data Governance and Orchestration Platform is unlocking Data and making it usable while adhering to compliance policies and enhancing business performance and operational efficiency.
HE Mr Franz Fayot, Minister of the Economy stated, “Congratulations to the five winners of the 2021 fall edition of Capatult: Kickstarter. I am looking forward to the selected companies to launch operations in Luxembourg and contribute to the development and diversification of the local Fintech and start-up ecosystem with innovative solutions in the field of data, AI and sustainability.”
Targeting fintech startups from around Europe, Catapult: Kickstarter 2021 Fall edition aimed to effectively provide support and critical guidance to the ten firms, selected from over 180 applications, in their growth. In order to effectively leverage the strengths of Luxembourg’s community and capabilities, the selected firms focused on delivering services to financial institutions (B2B), with particular emphasis on Insurtech, DeFi, AI, Regtech, Fundtech, B2C payments, as well as ESG.
The two-week programme aims to help Fintech entrepreneurs to develop their business models with a focus on business scaling and risk management. Catapult: Kickstarter Fall edition was tailored to the particular stage of the participating Fintechs and structured around classroom tutorials, experts talks, customer discovery, one-to-one meetings, pitching sessions, industry discovery sessions and mentorship sessions. The ten participating Fintech companies have been supported across those two weeks by no less than 20 partners, including Compellio, Luxembourg For Finance (LFF), Expon Capital, and Middlegame Ventures (MGV), guiding them through business models, funding strategies and industry product testing.
This Fall Bootcamp culminated with an online pitch session on Friday 26th of November, gathering all the partners and supporters of the programme. The 10 companies delivered their final pitches, leveraging the input they had received from the programme partners, experts and mentors over the course of the two-weeks bootcamp.
The jury, composed of Ananda Kautz, Head of Innovation, Digital Banking and Payments at ABBL, Frédéric Becker, Project Manager at Luxembourg Ministry of the Economy, Owen Reynolds, Associate at Expon Capital, Philipp von Restorff, Deputy CEO at Luxembourg for Finance, Kanishk Walia, VC and Growth FinTech Investor at MiddleGame Ventures and Nasir Zubairi, CEO of the LHoFT, listened to ten outstanding pitches and declared, after a very difficult deliberation, that Cent Finance, FUNDSaiQ, goscore+, Thread and Velotix were the five winners of Catapult: Kickstarter 2021, Fall edition. In addition to eligibility for up to €50,000 in subsidies from the Ministry of Economy to continue their development and expansion in Luxembourg, each company participating in the bootcamp received a one-year free membership at the LHoFT.
Nasir Zubairi, CEO of LHoFT Foundation, concluded, “The ten participating firms were outstanding businesses with significant relevance to the Luxembourg financial centre, addressing some key challenges of and opportunities for local actors. The feedback from both the Luxembourg industry and the participants themselves has been humbling in its praise of the programme and the participating firms. Critically, it is great that all ten firms have already advanced in discussions with potential Luxembourg clients and partners.”
