100 startups compete for Startup of the Year at Italy’s DigithON

The third edition of Italy’s first digital marathon, DigithON, kicks-off today with 100 Italian startups competing for Startup of the Year in front of multinationals, investors, and analysts, among others.

From September 6 to 9, 100 startups selected by the Scientific Committee of DigithON, will compete in Bisceglie, Italy for the Startup of the Year award.

The digital marathon consists of four days of events, meetings and debates on the digital world with experts and prestigious guests, including Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, and 100 startups ready to contend for the victory of DigithON 2018, with the prizes offered by the partners.

Partners include Poste Italiane, Mediaset, Sisal, Enel, Facebook, Google, and Cisco, along with investment funds such as Invitalia, Intesa Sanpaolo, and Unicredit.

For the startup competition, over 300 young inventors from all over Italy will have five minutes available to pitch their business idea and then answer questions from analysts and investors.

The over 300 participants at DigithON, which make up the 100 teams competing, come from all over Italy, in particular from 16 regions: Puglia (34), Basilicata (2), Sardinia (6), Sicily (2), Umbria (2) , Marche (3), Abruzzo (4), Campania (10), Lazio (16), Piedmont (3), Lombardy (8), Trentino Alto Adige (2), Emilia-Romagna (3), Friuli Venezia Giulia (1 ), Veneto (3), Tuscany (1), according to Startup Italia.

The first prize at DigithON 2018, decreed by the scientific committee, together with the online voting, will receive a check for €10,000 offered by Confindustria Bari-Bat.

In addition to the startup competion, DigithON is characterized by meetings, events and comparisons with the protagonists of the business world and institutions on the most diverse, digital themes.

Francesco Boccia

“This year we will focus on the search for digital ideas that focus on sensitive and central issues in the international political-cultural-economic debate, such as the management and ownership of data as well as the effects of same on the business,” said DigithON President Francesco Boccia via Startup Italia.

“With the ecommerce boom our cities are increasingly flooded with tens of millions of parcels. In Parliament we have laid the groundwork to revolutionize (from 2020) the concept of universal postal service by extending it to the sorting, distribution and transport of postal items from 2 to 5 kg, thus ensuring competition between online brands, small business owners and giants. Not to mention security and personal freedom after the Cambridge Analytica scandal,” he added.

Digital, at the center of DigithON, will be developed in various thematic areas, both through the products and services presented by the startups in the competition, and through the interventions of sector experts and institutional representatives who will support the competition.

These digital areas include Augmented Reality, the Internet of Things, Tourism, Robotics, Industry 4.0, Health and Wellness, Media and Entertainment, Education, Food, Big Data, Ecommerce and Logistics, Blockchain, Fintech and more.