Cygnetise among the 5 winners of LHoFT’s 2021 Catapult Kickstarter fintech programme
Cygnetise was selected as a winner of Catapult: Kickstarter 2021 - a 4-week fintech acceleration bootcamp developed by the LHoFT Foundation in close collaboration with the Ministry of Economy in Luxembourg. Among the other winners of the programme were Greenomy, PayPact, Divizend and NodeVenture. Each of the 5 fintech finalists will receive a €50,000 subsidy.
Over the past few years, Luxembourg has built up one of the strongest and most supportive Fintech ecosystems in Europe. The Grand Duchy has created an effective collaboration platform providing a series of acceleration programmes and facilities for early-stage fintech start-ups including incubators, funding, soft-landing and mentorship from established international financial and tech organisations.
One of these programmes is Catapult: Kickstarter – a 4-week acceleration bootcamp that was developed in partnership with the LHoFT Foundation. The programme targets 10 early-stage fintech start-ups from around the world and aims to help them scale and navigate business risk by leveraging the strengths of Luxembourg’s community and capabilities. The format of the programme is digital and a hybrid of classroom tutorials, experts talks, customer discovery, challenges, one-to-one meetings, pitching sessions, mentorship sessions and networking events.
The 2021 edition of Catapult was organised in partnership with some of Luxembourg’s leading financial and tech providers and facilitators like Luxembourg For Finance (LFF), Expon Capital, Middlegame Ventures (MGV), KPMG, Deloitte, ACA, LSFI, and many others.
During the selection stage, LHoFT received more than 100 applications from over 36 countries. Out of which, it selected Cygnetise and the following 9 programme participants:
Unum IOS (Luxembourg), Go2insure (Slovenia), Greenomy (Belgium), Meliora (Luxembourg), Paypact (Romania), EthicsGrade (UK), Autopay Mobility (Poland), NodeVenture (Austria), Divizend (Germany).
About this year’s Catapult cohort, Nasir Zubairi, CEO of the LHoFT, commented:
“We are very excited by the Catapult: Kickstarter programme and the firms that are participating. The quality of the firms is clear. We believe the participants will gain a lot from the programme and from connecting with the Luxembourg finance community; vice versa, we believe these firms also have a lot to offer the financial centre in solving key challenges that institutions are experiencing. We were amazed to have received 107 applications from over 36 countries for this first edition of the programme; it is really FANTASTIC to see such interest in Luxembourg Fintech and the LHoFT.”
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Following the intense 4-week curriculum, this year’s bootcamp culminated with an online final pitch session gathering all the partners and friends of the programme. During the event, all contestants delivered their final pitches and the esteemed jury including Owen Reynolds of Expon Capital, Ananda Kautz of ABBL, Frederic Becker of Lux. Ministry of the Economy, Nasir Zubairi of LHoFT, Philipp Von Restorff of LFF and Pascal Bouvier of Middlegame Ventures, selected Cygnetise and fellow start-ups Greenomy, PayPact, Divizend and NodeVenture as winners of the 2021 Catapult: Kickstarter programme.
Commenting on Cygnetise’s win, CEO Steve Pomfret said:
“It’s very flattering to be picked from the amount and quality of other start-ups. Credit is due to the entire Cygnetise team. We shall now look forward to strengthening our presence in Luxembourg which provides a huge opportunity to grow our business.”
About Cygnetise: Cygnetise is an award-winning blockchain application that helps organisations reduce the risk of fraud, facilitate business continuity and contribute to ESG by digitising the process of managing authorised signatories.
Cygnetise allows finance and operations teams to update their authorised signatory data in real time. It also provides a variety of sharing mechanisms so that counterparts can always have access to the most up-to-date information without the need to recompile and redistribute.