by daily star.com.lb - Brooke Anderson

BEIRUT: A Lebanese startup that tracks customer shopping behavior through close-circuit television will head to Switzerland to compete for $1 million in investments. It was selected among augmented reality for mobile gaming, personalized travel tips, a food search service, a business payment system, refugee crowdfunding, security and data analysis, a platform for engineers and architects, an app to treat depression, a publishing platform for personalized books, and a childcare network.

These were some of the businesses that were presented at Seedstars World at the co-working space Antwork in Beirut Friday morning. After careful deliberation, it was Vision in Motion, a startup team with an aim to further improve on and solve the problems of tracking customers’ taste that was selected to head to Switzerland. “We liked that they had technology and real intellectual property at their core, There’s value at the IP. The founder is really good at what he does. He knows how to explain and pitch the business. He was the guy behind the tech. The last thing that was key was he had real traction. He’d sign Pepsi Co. regionally. That made him the clear winner,” said Riad Abu Jaoude, executive director at Middle East Venture Partners, a judge for the competition.

For the fourth year in a row, the Geneva-based Seedstars has selected one among 10 Lebanese startups to compete before a 10-member investment team to participate in an 80-person global competition for international entrepreneurs. The winning team will head to Lausanne in April to compete for one week, where the top team will then be awarded $1 million in investments. There are 12 other similar competitions across the MENA region.