The Grand Finale at the leading award show for startups in the Nordics took place Tuesday evening in the beautiful Harpa Concert Hall in the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik. The Startup of the Year of the Nordics in 2016 is Realm.io.
It was an impressive lineup of the absolute top of startups in the Nordics that competed against each other Tuesday evening. The jury has carefully chosen among the 800+ nominees and more than 24.000 people have voted.
Danish Realm.io, who recently just reached impressive one billion users of their database solution, won the prestigious Startup of the Year category.
Icelandic Medilync, a cloud-based solution designed to make life easier for diabetics, won the People’s Choice award.
All countries have presented high quality candidates and there is a good balance between B2B and B2C companies, also characterized by being extremely scalable, Kim Balle, CEO and Co-Founder of Nordic Startup Awards and Global Startup Awards, says.
The countries most notoriously known for their startup culture, Sweden and Finland, took home four awards each, while Iceland impressively compared to the size of the country took two prizes.
Denmark got home with three awards, and Norway with the prestigious Founder of the Year award.
The interest has been enormous, and the concept has spread to Southeast Asia, India and Central Europe. The whole thing is started from Denmark and has been controlled from Copenhagen and Budapest, helping to brand the Nordic region as a great extension to Silicon Valley and attract even more of the talents that the startup industry crave, Kim Balle says.
Péter Oszkó from the jury evaluated the winner of the Startup of the Year like this:
Innovation is about efficiency and this is what Realm.io is targeting within mobile app development, which is a common focus area within all types of businesses. The fact that Realm.io is used in apps deployed on a billion devices, demonstrates the scalability of their technology, which have made them attractive for investors as well, says Péter, Founder and Managing Partner at OXO Group.
And the regional winners of the other categories:
- Newcomer of the Year: Universal Avenue / Sweden
- Best IoT Startup: 720° / Finland
- Best Exponential Startup: Clearhaus / Denmark
- Best Bootstrapped: Catchbox / Finland
- Best Social Tech Startup: Karolina Fund / Iceland
- Best Investment Company: Northzone / Sweden
- Best Accelerator Program: STING Accelerate / Sweden
- Best Office Space: Rainmaking Loft / Denmark
- Founder of the Year: Are Traasdahl @Tapad / Norway
- Best Business Angel: Moaffak Ahmed / Finland
- CTO Hero of The Year: Umut Alp @Truecaller / Sweden
- Startup Media of the Year: Arctic Startup / Finland
The Grand Finale this year was hosted by the wonderdul team of Icelandic Startups, the Nordic Startup Awards’ country partner in Iceland.
