Last night, Sofia held the Regional Grand Finale of the Central European Startup Awards. The CESAwards recognize and celebrate the entrepreneurial spirit and startup ecosystems in a series of events in Central and Eastern Europe. The competition happens in four phases – from nominations throughout voting for both national and regional winners to ultimately joining the Global Startup Awards. What’s interesting about the national and regional voting is that the public is the 8th member of the jury.

Central European Startup Awards hall

In September, we won the Best IoT Startup Award in the national round, which qualified us for the regional finale, so the long wait became. New round of public voting and jury gathering together to evaluate the national winners led to a day-long event centred around the best startups and #futureshapers from Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

We are extremely happy that the public and the jury have decided to award Bee Smart Technologies as the Best IoT Startup in CEE! “This is a huge recognition for our work and the great team behind it in the radically competitive environment that the CEE has become”, our CEO and founder Sergey said in his thank you speech on the stage.

Pollenity ex. Bee Smart Technologies team at Central European Startup Awards

The Bulgarian entrepreneurial ecosystem came in strong in this year’s finale with three Regional winners out of 12 categories. Congrats to our fellow winners LAUNCHub (Investor of the Year) and Puzl CowOrKing (Best Coworking Space).