ApisProtect wins Start-Up Pitch Competition at the 6th Annual Women in Tech Festival in California.
19th November 2020
This year hundreds of applications were received for the 6th Annual Women in Tech Start-Up Pitch Competition. A short-list of six global start-ups was chosen to pitch to the esteemed panel of judges including Sarah Holmes, Unshackled Ventures, Ilse Calderon, OVO Fund and Chris Yeh, Wasabi Ventures Global.
ApisProtect was selected as the winner of this year’s start-up competition. ApisProtect is an Irish Agtech company that uses unique sensor technology to monitor honey bees to ensure global food supply. Led by Dr Fiona Edwards Murphy, ApisProtect has developed innovative bee monitoring technology to enable beekeepers to remotely manage their colonies 24/7 and reduce honey bee losses. ApisProtect will be launching its commercial bee monitoring technology in the U.S later this month.
“At Silicon Valley Forum, we’re proud to do our part to continue the discussion around female entrepreneurship and leadership,” said Denyse Cardozo, CEO and President of Silicon Valley Forum. “This year for the 6th Annual Women in Tech Festival, we took the festival online enabling a more global audience to participate.”
Denyse added, “Our hope for the 2020 Women in Tech Festival was to highlight extraordinary women who are lighting the way forward and provide inspiration to those who are just beginning to find their way.”
Shaloo Garg, Managing Director, Microsoft for Startups, Silicon Valley and Southwest region, was the Emcee for the evening. Microsoft has been a long-standing partner of the Women in Tech Festival. ApisProtect joined the Microsoft for StartUp Program in Europe earlier this year to help scale its infrastructure to support its global rollout.
Dr Fiona Edwards Murphy, CEO of ApisProtect (pictured), said “Our mission at ApisProtect, is to save the honey bees because if we don’t take action now, we’ll lose our most important insect ally. We want to secure the supply of one-third of our diet, and make sure we can nourish and feed the 9.7 billion people on planet earth by 2050.”
ApisProtect won the WMB Sodexo Newcomer Award in 2018. It’s great to see this company going from strength-to-strength and we look forward to reporting on their expansion plans in the US shortly.
