Seedstars World, a global seed-stage start-up competition for emerging markets, has named IDWork as South Africa’s top start-up. The company will represent South Africa at the Seedstars Summit in Switzerland where it will compete for up to US$1m in equity investment.

Last year, the global competition was won by South African start-up Giraffe, a mobile platform that helps people find employment. Giraffe beat 64 entrants from 54 countries to the top spot.

IDWork, which is headed by Sayo Folawiyo, offers a platform that connected technically minded informal workers (like tilers) to clients. As part of the Seedstars programme, it will now go through a week-long training exercise and will have the opportunity to meet winners from other emerging markets as well as meet with investors and mentors.

Sortd, which offers a service that organises e-mail and creates a to-do list, came second, while Wumdrop, which allows anything to be delivered at the click of a button, grabbed the last spot in the top three, Seedstars said.

The other start-ups invited to pitch were Crew Pencil, Pargo, Guardian Angel Safety Solution, You, Baby and I, Vitls, UmoyAir Communications and Riovic.

The 10 start-ups pitched in front of a panel of six, made up of Jayshree Naidoo (head of Incubator at Standard Bank), Polo Radebe (CEO at IDF), Ravi Naidoo (executive director for economic development & tourism in the City of Johannesburg), Charmaine Padayachy (principal at Omidyar Network), Fritz Milosevic (managing partner at Dotadvisors) and Marcello Schermer (regional manager for Africa at Seedstars World).

Seedstars World will travel to Maputo next, to select the best start-up in Mozambique, which will be announced on 15 July.