- TechCrunch reviewed close to 3 000 nominated early-stage start-ups from around the world to choose the final 200 to participate in its Startup Battlefield 200 competition at the annual TechCrunch Disrupt event in San Fransisco, USA.
- Omnisient, the South African data analytics fintech that is accelerating financial inclusion, is among the 200 selected.
- Sixteen start-ups were selected from Africa.
- The full list of Startup Battlefield 200 start-ups can be viewed here.
TechCrunch, American global online newspaper focusing on hi-tech and start-up companies, has selected Omnisient, the South African data analytics fintech that is accelerating financial inclusion, as one of 200 early-stage tech start-ups that are most likely to have a positive impact on the world.
TechCrunch reviewed close to 3 000 nominated early-stage start-ups from around the world to choose the final 200 to participate in its Startup Battlefield 200 competition at the annual TechCrunch Disrupt event in San Fransisco, USA. The Startup Battlefield 200 is the world’s pre-eminent start-up competition where 200 start-ups are trained and invited to pitch in front of investors and TechCrunch editors. This year’s Startup Battlefield participants span artificial intelligence (AI), software as a service (SaaS), fintech, security, sustainability and space exploration.
“One of the cool advantages of being a first-party witness to the thousands of companies that come through our application pipeline every year is that we see emergent trends bubbling up far sooner than most do. It’s a huge privilege to be able to see the future this way and one of the most exciting parts of our job,” says Matthew Panzarino, Editor-in-Chief of TechCrunch.
Omnisient is the privacy-preserving data collaboration platform that provides cutting-edge cryptography, advanced analytics and AI to enable financial services institutions (FSIs) to leverage new consumer data sources in a secure and regulatory compliant manner. Omnisient’s platform has already enabled local banks to use retail shopper data to identify 3.2 million individuals as credit-worthy who would have previously been denied credit due to limited background information.
Speaking about the fintech category of the competition, Panzarino added: “Fintech is going deep over the next year building infrastructure in huge but un-addressed world economies rather than over-indexing on the western markets. Whatever holdover grip that foreign banking and social norms have on those systems is getting unravelled by start-ups that are creating new ways for populations in those markets to engage with finances.”
“We are in the midst of speaking to investors locally and overseas to raise Series A funding for international expansion and further development of our technology,” says Omnisient CEO Jon Jacobson. “Being invited to join TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt is not only international recognition of the disruptive nature of our platform and the impact we are having in growing financial inclusion, but also a fantastic opportunity for us to fine-tune our pitch and share our story with an audience of US investors.”
TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 will be held from Tuesday, 19 September – Thursday, 21 September at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
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TechCrunch Disrupt
With over 10,000 attendees, TechCrunch Disrupt is the world’s leading authority in debuting revolutionary startups, introducing game-changing technologies, and discussing what’s top of mind for the tech industry’s key innovators. This year, Disrupt gathers the best and brightest entrepreneurs, investors, hackers, and tech fans virtually and in-person for interviews, demos, Startup Battlefield 200, Networking, and more.
The event is known for debuting the hottest startups, introducing game-changing technologies and discussing what’s top-of-mind for the tech industry’s key innovators. Past companies launched at Disrupt include Dropbox, Mint, Cloudflare, Fitbit, and Yammer.
For more information on TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 and Startup Battlefield 200 visit the conference’s website here. Disrupt passes can be purchased here.
Omnisient
Over 1.7 billion people globally lack access to formal financial services that can unlock access to housing, education, healthcare and even capital to start a business due to their lack of a credit history.
Our technology is changing this.
Omnisient’s privacy-preserving Data Collaboration platform provides cutting-edge cryptography, advanced analytics, and AI to enable Financial Services Institutions (FSIs) to leverage new consumer data sources in a secure and regulatory compliant manner. With Omnisient, FSIs can increase margins and acquire new customers by creating innovative predictive models from new alternative data to more accurately predict consumer behaviour, so they can offer services to historically underserved markets at lower risk.
To date, in collaboration with our clients, we have enabled 8 million credit invisible individuals in South Africa to be scored for credit risk, out of which 3.2 million have already been identified as having a “good risk” credit score and can potentially gain access to affordable, life-changing credit that can provide them with opportunities for upward mobility and financial security.
In June 2023, Omnisient was invited to join the World Economic Forum as a Tech Pioneer to contribute to the Forum’s work in growing financial inclusion.
Established in South Africa in 2019, we are enabling over 80 leading banks, insurers, retailers, and health & wellness organisations in Africa and the Middle East to build collective knowledge on consumers that can be used to better understand and predict their consumers’ and prospects’ behaviour to drive positive change for individuals, for businesses, and for society.