Co-funded by the European Union

International migration and innovative start-ups: the IOE-Seedstars Migration challenge

  • At the end of the GFMD 2021 Summit, the winner of the IOE-Seedstars Migration challenge was proclaimed: it is the tech start-up DignifAI, providing concrete support to the employment of migrant population in the Colombian-Venezuelan and Brazilian-Venezuelan borders.
  • A new migration challenge for 2022 was just launched

As reported in this article from March Newsletter, the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) Summit was held virtually in January 2021. Since 2016, the International Organisation of Employers (IOE) is hosting the Business Advisory Group on Migration that is a Global Platform for members to coordinate the business perspective in the area of migration policy and providing input to the global migration debate, including at the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD).

During the GFMD, the second IOE-Seedstars Migration Challenge Competition was also launched. This is a start-up competition, where innovative business entrepreneurs from around the world present their innovative solutions to the different challenges in labour migration processes. Eighteen selected start-ups participated in the last phase of the competition, each one presenting a business model focused on education technologies (EdTech), financial technologies (Fintech), human resources, artificial intelligence annotation tools and visa processes.

The award was given to the tech start-up DignifAI, a Colombian start-up company, whose mission is “Outsourcing Dignity through Artificial Intelligence”. The social backbone of DignifAI is the recruitment, training, and distribution of tasks to the migrant population and their vulnerable host communities in the Colombian-Venezuelan and Brazilian-Venezuelan borders.

Winner Enrique José García, Managing Partner of DignifAI, commented: “This recognition is a great honour for our team, and we appreciate the trust and support that IOE and Seedstars is giving us. More than a celebration, we hope this award can help us spread awareness around the scale of the Venezuelan migration crisis, which remains one of the biggest displacement crises the world has ever known. With AI microwork, we are maximising the potential of migrants who are looking for more than just charity, and instead want opportunities to be productive members of society. DignifAI believes in the long-term multiplier effect their integration represents to the social and economic fabric of their host countries”.

Roberto Suárez Santos, IOE Secretary General, said: “At IOE, we believe that this competition is in line with the need to promote innovations and solutions for well-managed migration. Start-ups like DignifAI are at the core of change, which is so important these days. They bring their personal experience, network, and skills; they are part of ‘building forward better’ in a post-pandemic world. We wish the winner every success in their endeavours”.

First and second runners-up – CasparCoding and Laowai Career – commented:

The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted life in general. At Caspar Coding, we had to innovate to meet the new challenge by developing new ways to thrive in spite of the paradigm shift in the business world. But in the midst of all these, we saw that there was indeed a great deal of demand for tech people than ever before. Since practically, everyone was working remotely, and most businesses shifted online, there was a corresponding increase in the creation and expansion of digital products and services. In the face of this change, Caspar Coding embraced remote collaboration as a standard business model. We are also working on executing a new hackathon-style event called "Walk the Talk". We intend to bring recruiters from Europe to Lagos, Nigeria, to select from a competitive pool, and hire. We are starting with Lagos which has one of the most dynamic market for tech talent on the African continent, and we hope to expand to other cities on the continent” (CEOs Sebastiaan Tan and Chuck Otuya). 

While COVID-19 has shuttered businesses globally and massive layoffs, there are some companies and jobs still hiring during the coronavirus pandemic. Beijing-based, LaowaiCareer is revolutionizing cross border talent recruitment by automating and localizing the process for its clients. The company has established international relationships with the world’s biggest jobs sites such as Glassdoor, Zip Recruiter, LinkedIn, and many others that allows companies in China advertise their open jobs at the global scale to reach out to a massive number of applicants located in various countries. The company has also developed their own Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that allows HR managers to easily manage incoming applications and streamline their recruitment process witch result in a 50% time and cost saving. With over 4000+ registered companies and over 137,000 jobs seekers the company has an ambitious plan to become the one stop solution for companies seeking to hire international talent by 2023”, said CEO Yuri Khlystov.