GESAwards marks 10 years of global EdTech excellence

Pioneers in creating a global conversation in EdTech

The Global Edtech Startup Awards (@GESAwards) is an initiative of MindCET- EdTech Innovation Center that brought together a unique and highly successful partnership between all main Edtech organizations from throughout the whole world. In its tenth year, it is today the largest Edtech Startup competition and community in the world. The final takes place in January every year in London and continues to provide a fertile environment in which participants discover a way to reach a broader market through competing with and learning from their international peers, the result being pioneering Edtech solutions that benefit the realm of Education at large.

Unveiling and identifying talents from every corner of the world and providing a global stage to enhance the experience of learning through innovation is the core motivator for the GESAwards. Opening this challenge to the wider world of innovators has yielded myriad solutions and original concepts, many of which are transforming the field. The strength of this competition lies in its partnerships and collaborations, be it with accelerators, venture studios, government bodies, R&Ds, tech companies, or academic institutions, to “explore, strengthen, and develop innovative and relevant solutions to meet the needs of the new generations”. These partnerships and collaborations result in highly valuable outcomes every year.

Indeed, the words “partnership”, “collaboration”, and “connection” weave a common thread through every testimony on the GESAwards. MindCET founder and CEO Avi warshavsky emphasizes the value of “community” that the GESAwards fosters, as well as the power of real partnerships, and describes it as the central platform for “unmediated encounters between entrepreneurs from different cultures and different market conditions”. MindCET VP R&D Lea Cecilia Waismann, Ph.D. refers to “a true collaboration between EdTech organizations around the world that enables growth and significantly strengthen the ecosystem”, while past participant and winner of the “Most Innovative Startup” in 2024, Ogden Morse of storywizard.ai called it as, “a uniting event”. Bodo Hoenen of nolej.io , also a p winner of the Best Edtech Solution in 2024, said the experience allowed him to “bounce around the serendipitous way”, and for past track winner Titi Adewusi of 9ijakids.com , the collaborative process, specifically in the Bootcamp event held two days prior to the GESAwards, helped her to “set (her) sights higher”.

To what can we attribute the GESAwards meriting such accolades?

In practical terms, the GESAwards is an Edtech innovation space that offers unbound opportunities for entrepreneurs, investors, EdTech organizations, and the education industry as a whole, to connect and learn, share and improve ideas, solutions and products. This stand-out proposition which connects participants from over 150 countries, enables unprecedented deep reach out to different regions of the world.

“We’ve learned to listen carefully to opportunities,” says Warshavsky, who points to a tension between getting very accurate outcomes and exploring and wandering. “We’re doing both, and need both.”

Pierre-Antoine Ullmo , Tyme Education CEO and founder of EXPeditions in Europe, is an active MindCET partner who was instrumental in founding the GESAwards. He is also one of the judges for the competition. He regards the awards as a smart ecosystem, or a “bid for smartness” that transcends quick fix solutions and embraces the capacity to exchange ideas and listen. All of which takes time, he stresses, an essential concept that he has embraced over the course of the past ten years, and for which he gives credit to MindCET for bringing to the fore. There’s a fine balance between smartness and the speed with which we’d like things to happen, had adds.

Warshavsky holds that the entrepreneurial process by its nature is non-linear, and that the journey of each startup venture is likely a chaotic one. Allowing time and engagement for the entrepreneur to manage what can become a sense of no-way-out is what MindCET advocates for through the GESAwards.

Global in nature

Japanese partner and longtime supporter @Norihisa (Nori) Wada, of the Global EdTech Acceleration Committee Japan, who is billed by online publication Medium as a “global citizen and leader in assessment, gaming, and education technology”, celebrates the concept of the GESAwards in its entirety, particularly in terms of its international nature and search for solutions in Education that can be applied around the world. He praises the founders for operating from the start in a democratic way and says that he saw from the competition’s early stages the potential in terms of how it was designed to gather many partners from diverse locations. Briefly, the competition is structured through its partners' celebration of their own regional semi-final event, whose winners become candidates for the final GESAwards event in London. Here a panel of judges made up of select leaders of industry chooses the winners in the presence of an EdTech affiliated audience. Added to this is a two-day Bootcamp held prior to the finals, where the top three Startups of each regional semi-final, connect with significant players, learn practical tools and discover opportunities for their own business growth. This structure has proven to be incredibly successful in achieving its outcome over the years.

Nori Wada wears many hats. He works closely with the education systems in Japan and is an investor, researcher and lecturer at Kyoto University in the areas of game and habit design. This familiarity with the broader Education sector is where he found common ground when first encountering MindCET and its people, who are also closely involved in Education as a whole. “(By being involved) in this way we know what the education systems are looking for”, he explains. He views this as a “shared DNA” with MindCET, once again demonstrating the power and deep level of partnership GESawards enables.

Similarly, US based partner and tech entrepreneur Jean Hammond , founder of LearnLaunch Fund + Accelerator , feels empowered through the global nature of the GESAwards, calling the program a “community of humans who are about the enterprise called education.” It aligned with her vision to support the concept of entrepreneurship in education which has historically been overlooked. While she sees the GESAwards as an opportunity to support local heroes, it also provides a platform to be part of something bigger.

In agreement, Ullmo points out that one of the successes of the GESAwards is that it has “moved the geographic cursor” and brought a new geographic balance in terms of where we are looking for ideas and innovations, and learning from regions other than where was considered obvious ten years ago.

Community of Practice

Part of the success of the GESAwards, says Ullmo, is its embrace of the concept of Community of Practice, a key component of the MindCET Ecosystem, defined as those communities which are “formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor”. For Ullmo, the success of the GESAwards experiment is situated in the willingness and ability of those participating to exchange ideas and, importantly, to listen. “The return on intelligence is as important as the return on investment,” he says, referring to GESAwards’ own specific version of ROI.

In 2014 the “community” aspect of the MindCET ecosystem was flagged as a prominent factor in the search for and discovery of effective Edtech solutions, and the GESAwards was designed around this way of thinking. According to Warshavsky, “One of the keys to effective solutions is the unmediated encounters between entrepreneurs from different cultures and different market conditions.” The establishment of the GESAwards provided a natural platform to accomplish this collaborative goal, resulting in the emergence of many ideas, talents and initiatives which may previously have remained undiscovered. “There’s a lot that happens when all of these companies are in the same room,’ he notes.

While Ullmo agrees that great emphasis should be placed on the concept and vision of Community of Practice in Edtech, he points out that we should keep top of mind the greater domain in which this field is situated: Education. Rather than being confused with the other ‘Techs’, such as Fintech, Healthtech or Biotech, Edtech has a specificity in that the first thing you want to achieve is to make progress in the field of learning. This is echoed by entrants and partners alike.

Genuine and meaningful partnerships

Partnerships are genuine and meaningful, Warshavsky points out, and they have yielded significant results. Significantly, the “design and foresight” of the competition as referenced by Japanese partner Nori Wada, is particularly attractive to governments around the world, not least of all his own. His involvement with the GESAwards led to the Japanese Ministry of Education choosing the competition as the official Japanese Edtech Startup awards, making the semifinal that is held in that region the country’s premier event in the field. With the Ministry of Education Japan, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry Japan, and the Japan External Trade Organisation being official sponsors of the event, the government is officially putting its emblem on it, declaring that it endorses this as the competition that everyone in the field is encouraged to attend. Naturally, this attracts the attention of a lot of companies and organizations who qualify to take part. In this way the GESAwards help to build local Edtech Startup systems that ultimately feed into the global structure.

Structure and design

Wada maintains that MindCET’s innovative thought process and approach is demonstrated through the GESAwards structure, and especially through what is known as the special tracks. These are set up because, while education and technology can be generalistic, every few years trends emerge that demand their own attention, Wada explains. Special tracks are open to anyone for sponsorship, and encourage startups to apply that are specifically interested in a special area or category. This provides unique opportunities for the industry to learn and connect with the latest innovation.? Every year these tracks are re-defined according to the sponsor partners from the industry – companies, funds or government – and their perception of trend or need.

To illustrate the point, Wada mentions the well-known and -regarded HR company, Mynavi, that elected to sponsor its own special track in the GESAwards semi-final in Japan, as well as the annual finals, in its quest to bridge the gap between higher education and the workforce. In initiating the track “Enhancing Employability and Career Growth”, the company states that it seeks to “transform education for the future society and provide educational solutions that meet the needs of society together”.

Another example of the success of the special track design comes from Nigeria. Winner of the track in partnership with Jacobs Foundation in 2021 for Leveraging EdTech to Address Learning Differences, Titilope Adewusi participated with the product 9ijakids.com , described as “an online learning experience to help children fall in love with learning using games”. Through fun interactive games, children become more engaged and motivated to learn.

The impact of participating – and winning – for Adewusi was immeasurable. “It was a good experience for me in that I got to meet the other people who bring an impressive level of research in the global educational space, and I benefited from the training with the MindCET team, the Bootcamp, that looked specifically at the learning sector, where I learnt more about its particularities, what was important,” she said. “Truly I was in shock that I made it to the finals,” she confessed, “and then went on to win our track. This was the first validation outside of where we were,” she adds.

How the GESAwards impacts local markets

The GESAwards has over its ten years attracted more than 8000 Startups from 135 countries, reflecting its significant reach, with 58 judges from around the world considering relevant factors in their assessments. While at the time of its inception the only mature environment for Edtech innovation may have been the USA, now the countries from which the GESAwards has applicants extend over multiple continents, and the diversity and scale of what is now the largest Edtech Startup community and competition globally is evident.

Fernando Valenzuela Migoya , Global Digital Education Thought leader and GESAwards partner from Mexico, has seen the field grow exponentially in his region of Latin America (LATAM) since its involvement. He believes that the role of technology has gone beyond teaching and learning, that it has become an integral path of human activity.

LATAM went from being a marginal market for EdTech around 2009 to a far more active sector today. In 2009 he was president of a prominent publisher who sought to evolve in the digital space, but was still trying to do it all themselves. So, he began looking at open innovation practices and bringing entrepreneurs to change and accelerate the offerings. He encountered the GESAwards at its early stages as a way to promote and grow potential entrepreneurs, which led to significant success for the publishers, big tech and schools in the region.

“We’ve learned that it is the same all over the world no matter the level of infrastructure,” he said. “We are all humans trying to learn, and the way we learn is similar, facing similar challenges.” He notes that working with countries that have different limitations, connectivity, devices, and digital culture, for example, pushes people to become more creative, and to solve challenges that more developed countries may take for granted, bringing a different level of innovation. “Both emerging markets and developed markets complement each other,” he adds, referring to different needs and perspectives. For most GESAwards entrants, just being in the local semifinals or the finals has been transformational.

The process is what counts

The process of the competition is where its standout value is to be found. Says Warshavsky, “It’s not easy for a Startup to bear in mind every aspect of development, so an event or process like GESAwards can really guide companies to be aware of the aspects of work to generate better products.”

Past participant and winner of the Best Edtech Solution in 2024 Bodo Hoenen , of France-based nolej.io was ranked by TIME magazine among the top 50 Edtech Startups in the world in the same year. For him, the entire process was very well organized, and the connections made over the course of the competition led to serendipitous opportunities which he reckons may not have been available to him otherwise. “We were able to accomplish more,” he said, as a result of having participated and won in the GESAwards.

Hoenen, whose LinkedIn profile bills him as, “A scientist, building a Super Collective Intelligence, and infrastructure to power the future of learning and Innovation”, and who is used to pitching to VC’s, felt that the GESAwards gave him and his team access to the very audience that they wanted to see ultimately using their product. “There’s a lot of value in that,” he said, “every time you are forced to speak about your product you learn more. It’s very different pitching to customers, especially when you’re on a stage. So you are forced to create an investor-type pitch but to appeal to customers too.”

Ogden Morse, CEO of storywizard.ai , which won in the category of “Most Innovative Startup” in 2024, particularly likes the format of the GESAwards. Storywizard.ai from Israel, which started as an AI-powered app for telling bedtime stories, was early on adopted by teachers, and evolved to be a “highly configurable personalized-learning platform enabling rich, self-directed experiences in classrooms and homes worldwide… (and is) helping to lead the AI transformation in the education sector by providing a direct link between imagination and academic achievement”. It currently has over 50,000 users in 167 countries, including teachers and students in more than 1,500 schools.

Coming from a long line of teachers and storytellers, and self-described as “genetically predisposed to the profession,” Morse claims that even while teaching he was always thinking of ways to enhance the educational experience. In terms of the GESAwards process, he felt that the competition’s call for a succinct message in each entrant’s pitch was a nice way of neatly showcasing those that had reached “the top of the pack”. He values that there is a lot of “great competition”, which makes winning any category more meaningful.

Having entered and won the regional semi-final event, Morse who is from the U.S. and his two partners from Israel, Ofir Kerker (CTO) and Nadav Yaron (CPO) found themselves at the finals in London, which he described as a “classy event”. “It was very well managed,” said Ogden, “We looked out across the competition, and we were just really impressed. The event in London is truly global, especially when coming from the US, things can seem very US-centric.”

Likewise, Adewusi of Nigeria, while flattered and proud to have won in her category in 2021, saw the process and learning through participation in the competition as having the most value, which taught her how to do things better going forward. Her involvement has gone on to impact the Education sector in Nigeria as a result of her sharing what she learned and identifying global as well as specific needs in the region.

All winners would highly recommend other Startups to enter the awards - ultimately it has opened doors for each participant, locally and globally. As all GESAwards partners constantly reiterate, the GESAwards is above all a process, a learning ecosystem.

What lies ahead?

Partner Pierre-Antoine Ullmo reminds us that at the root of it all is the field of Education and Learning at large, how to make it accessible far and wide and finding solutions to problems and inhibitors through Edtech.

On what lies ahead, he notes that ten years is a very short period. For him, the past ten since the foundation of the GESAwards, even with all the seismic events happening around the world, feel like yesterday. “The next ten may feel like tomorrow,” he quips, “even though we face big challenges ahead.” He refers to both the conceptual challenge of AI as well as the civic challenge of making the world a better place as part of the need for encouraging smarter thinking.

US partner Jean Hammond echoes the notion that AI will be a challenge and will speed up the period of change ahead. She maintains that the GESAwards have been a “lighthouse” out there for people wanting change, “a story about the development of the Edtech industry over the globe through observing and meeting others”.

LATAM’s Valenzuela notes that the GESAwards now have a more competitive ecosystem, so with its unique global perspective and strength of local partners, can be maximized through finding another differential, possibly from the existing ethic of collaboration and bringing together different markets and creating different synergies – collaborating and not competing. “It would make sense to think differently, maybe coming out of the tracks, more in an open innovation fashion, to address the big challenges,” he said. “If we put together these solutions and they collaborate it could solve for a multitude of contexts.”

Warshavsky notes that through the GESAwards, MindCET has, “developed and expanded accessibility to entrepreneurship to hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs worldwide.” Having taken its first steps in this realm in 2012 with the competition launching in 2014, the community that has evolved can afford to applaud what has transpired over the past decade. What lies ahead in the coming years remains to be seen, but Warshavsky reminds us that the failure of last week may turn out to be the success of next week; we need to zoom out and view the whole picture while allowing time and space for new concepts to marinate, and entrepreneurial thinkers to actualize and materialize those ideas. The GESAwards will no doubt be the dynamic ecosystem in which the unimagined evolution of education takes place.

GESAwards unique value - a true global partnership

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