1. DAW Conference chooses the 3 startups representing Belgium in the
European Final of the StartUp Europe Awards 2016
 Ozentic, Yeba Essentials and Nappytalia, the winners of the Belgium National Final of
the #SEUA2016
 DAW Conference bet on women-led startups for the StartUp Europe Awards
Last September 22, during the DAW Conference closing ceremony at the European
Parliament, Bogdan Ceobanu, Policy Officer at European Comission representing StartUp
Europe, presented the winners of StartUp Europe Awards 2016 for Belgium.
The jury chose “Yeba” as the winner in the category of Creative, a belgian brand which
designs chic business bags for modern and active women; “Ozentic”, a startup that digitalise
certificates of authenticity, as the winner in the category of ICT; and “Nappytalia”, natural and
local products for women’s hair, as the winner in the category of Social.
In his intervention, Ceobanu explained to all the participants the StartUp Europe Awards 2016,
an initiative promoted by the European Commission with the support of StartUp Europe and
implemented by Finnova, which final European ceremony will be held in the first quarter of
2017. “We aim to help European entrepreneurs to create companies, to help them to grow
them bigger and recently we started to think internationaly. We believe that there’s a huge
global opportunity and people from everywhere in the world can have a massive impact in this
world. It’s just matter to have a great idea to work on it”, Ceobanu remarked.
The jury was composed by Brian Rashid, Silicon Valley Start-Up Trainer and Motivational
Speaker; Alexandra Dreschner, Director of Corporate Social Responsibility at UCB (CSR);
Haweya Mohammed, Co-Founder and Head of Communications at Afrobytes Paris and Jezabel
Martínez-Fabregas, Expert in Strategic Communications and Political Marketing. They listened

2. all the pitches carefully, asked questions to the startups and finally, they chose the winners of
the Belgian National Final of the SEUA 2016.
Digital African Women launch the first edition of the DAW Conference to provide the
opportunity for aspiring tech African women entrepreneurs to learn, engage and develop their
entrepreneurship skills with immersive training while maximizing the power and use of
technology.
During two days, September 21 and 22, different activities took place in the European
Parliament as a workshop, panels with international speakers and the Pitch Challenge. From
August 8 to September 21, registered startups were in a 6-week online pitch training
program. One of the requirements to participate was that the startup had to be led by
a female of any background or origin. This training program was a prerequisite to assist
to the final Pitch Challenge at the DAW conference on September 22, where they could
present their startups in front of the jury to be candidates for the European Final of the
StartUp Europe Awards 2016.
Press Contact
Catalina Valencia eustartup@finnova.be