Surfly wins SLINGSHOT’S 2020 COVID-19 Challenge 🏆

Back on one hot August evening, whilst Santa’s elves were still on their very long holidays, one elf who was obviously bored of lockdown decided to enter Surfly into the legendary SLINGSHOT…

 

As part of SFFxSWITCH (Singapore Fintech Festival x Singapore Week of Innovation and TeCHnology), SLINGSHOT is one of the world’s largest tech startup pitching competitions. The 2019 edition of SFFxSWITCH attracted more than 60,000 participants from 140 countries, and also saw a record 569 speakers with close to 1,000 exhibitors [1] and 41 international pavilions.

This year, top speakers at the event include Bill Gates, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and 2019 Nobel Prize winner for Economics Abhijit Banerjee to name a few.

 

Singapore is known to be one of Asia’s fastest-growing tech markets and also a global financial hub. How about some Dutch-Singapore trivia?

Did you know that in 2009, the Netherlands was the second-largest investor in Singapore, and in 2015 was the most important trade partner of Singapore in the European Union? Singapore and the Netherlands have enjoyed healthy trading relationships, and here at Surfly we experienced how fun they could also be to work with when we helped AXA Singapore to launch Surfly’s co-browsing and video chat to over 1,000 of their agents in just one week

 

Back to SLINGSHOT! In this competition the Top 100 Global startups had a chance to deliver in front of the biggest names in the startup industry with a shot at grand prizes worth up to $800,000.

Organized by Enterprise Singapore and Startup SG, this year’s SLINGSHOT was fully online for the first time, and for that reason the SLINGSHOT-COVID19, Creating the New Normal Challenge was launched for solutions that benefit and support business and society in adapting to a post-COVID world.

 

Out of 7,500 start-ups across 159 countries, Surfly was chosen as one of the Top 100 Global Startups! I then put on a sleepy and brave face and got out of bed at 4 AM on a Sunday to pitch on a global digital stage to the top tier of judges from some of the biggest global brands.

 

Drum roll, please…

AND SURFLY WAS CROWNED WINNER OF SLINGSHOT’S 2020 COVID-19 CHALLENGE! 

 

  

Here is the moment Surfly was announced the winner of the award, celebrated with some thumbs up’ing with Singapore’s Minister of State for Trade & Industry Alvin Tan.

And here is an article on Singapore’s leading news publication the Straits Times from today:

Dutch digital solutions start-up Surfly won the Slingshot Covid-19 Challenge, a new category in this year’s competition. It garnered the most interest in terms of investment and co-innovation from judges. The firm has developed co-browsing and video chat technology which enables people to connect and collaborate online quickly and securely, and took home $60,000 worth of prizes. 

 

A massive thank you to Enterprise Singapore, Startup SG, the Singaporean Government, and of course that little mystery elf for applying to the competition!

 

To learn more about how Surfly’s co-browsing technology is enabling organizations to connect people during COVID-19, visit our website or contact us