Startup Istanbul attendees vowing to stay true to entrepreneurship. (Image via Startup Istanbul)

This year's Startup Istanbul has highlighted a serious lack of local investment in local startups.

This was made obvious by the fact that not one Turkish startup made it into the group of 17 finalists who pitched to the international judging panel.

Although the standard of international competition was very high, some local entrepreneurs told Wamda the lack of investment in Turkey was a considerable obstacle to the success of their businesses.

Big local investors are often cautious, if not reluctant to offer their support to new tech startups, citing a lack of familiarity with the industry.

This is resulting in a lack of financial capital available to startups and an the absence of corporate support activities, such as marketing and PR, which would assist Turkish startups to better promote themselves internationally.

It should be noted that finalist wepress, a self-service app catering for freelance journalists, cofounder Erbil Sivaslioglu is an Istanbul native.

But there were winners

Kenyan software developers, Ian Karega and Louis Wajeiya, with their software company nim$ threw off the competition and took first place.

The overall winners, left to right, Ian Karega, Burak Büyükdemir, event organizer and founder of Turkish accelerator Etohum, Louis Wajeiya. (Image via Ronan Farrell)

The runner-up spot went to the Indonesian startup igrow, followed by project management platform taskulu from Iran in third place.

Entrepreneurs from across the Middle East, as well as from as far afield as Pakistan, Nigeria and Indonesia, spent several days at the Lütfi Kırdar Congress Center in downtown Istanbul. They worked with experienced mentors to perfect their sales pitches.

In the end, the competition came down to a three-minute presentation in front of a live audience of several hundred, followed by a brief but challenging Q&A session.

Passing judgment on the 17 finalists were well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur and academic Steve Blank, Teru Sato from Beenext and Andrea Barrica from 500 Startups.

One of the most interesting startups to surface was that of 16-year old Bahar Khan Akhunzada from Pakistan whose data security company Securitywall was amongst the high caliber finalists.

Burak Büyükdemir, event organizer and founder of Turkish accelerator Etohum, was clearly very happy with the way things had panned out.

“This year’s Startup Istanbul was amazing and the number of attendees from so many countries had shown just how internationalized it had become,” he said.

Both Büyükdemir and co-master of ceremony Ozan Sönmez have years of experience assisting and providing guidance to local startups in Turkey as well as internationally. 

Here is the full list of finalists:

1. Transterra Media (Lebanon)

2. igro (Indonesia)

3. taskulu (Iran)

4. Pockee (Greece)

5. Gaming battleground (Croatia)

6. Wavest (Israel)

7. Wepress (Turkey/UAE)

8. Expensya (Tunisia)

9. Securiwa (Pakistan)

10. Webhr (Pakistan)

11. Welcomepickups (Greece)

12. Nim$ (Kenya)

13. Mitoddler (Nigeria)

14. Melisseclimate (Bulgaria)

15. Hajjguides (Pakistan)

16. Picturesque (Hungary)

17. Uplift aeronautics (USA/Syria)