What Makes Wayra Better?

This article is written by Nardine B. M’barek, a Contributor Author at Startup Istanbul.

Marcus Trotter is an entrepreneur and an innovation specialist at Deutsche Bank and one ofBusiness Insider’s UK Fintech 35 under 35.  He helps the investment bank identify the most promising startup to work with, and previously worked at Telefonica’s tech accelerator Wayra in the UK.

Wayra is considered to be the largest accelerator in the world. Throughout the years, the number of people who are graduating from their academies keeps on increasing. It is not only the number of graduates who keeps on growing up each time, but their traction as well. The amount of money that those startups they have established is very important, millions of dollars are being raised every year, which is rather a huge success for the company as a whole. Wayra now connects Telefonica with disruptors, their main goal is to make startups’ business better and scale it, as well as improving their own business and scaling it as well. 

The most important things that they do is that they work with startups to offer innovative solutions to Telefónica's customers, which is rather done through offering to those startups the access to over 350 million people who are potential customers and clients from all over the world. They also offer a unique and effective interface between entrepreneurs on the one hand and their network of corporates, governments and other partners in the 17 countries in which Telefónica operates.

When it comes to Wayra UK, where Mr. Trotter works, they represent very committed partners as they have over 180 companies throughout the last 7 years in order to both help them scale their businesses, and scale the global startup ecosystem as well. They also created seven hubs that offer to their startups unique access to heads of state, corporate leaders, investors, serial entrepreneurs and even royalty. Overall, Wayra is a global team of tech lovers & start-up enthusiasts seeking new opportunities for their entrepreneurs and businesses.

During his speech at Startup Istanbul 2014, Mr. Marcus Trotter talked a lot about Wayra, what they do, and how they work hard to achieve their goals. The question is what makes Wayra different? There are -of course- plenty of other accelerators around the world who are ready to offer entrepreneurs chances to succeed and be on top, then what exactly differentiates Wayra from all those accelerating programs? 

Mr. Trotter tackled this question, what is different about Wayra and what should make you consider choosing it as an accelerator program is that, first of all, they are international, they have a big network of investors, entrepreneurs, and numerous people who work within the field of entrepreneurship. As you all know, being linked to a very rich and international network could really be beneficial in almost every case. They also tap into the power of Telefonica, who is mainly the largest digital telecommunication company; they are present in 3 continents and over 13 countries.

So, if you are looking for an option to go global and accelerate your business considerably, then Wayra is hopefully something that would help you achieve that. It also would give you exclusive access to markets and customers, since Telefonica has around 17 Million customers worldwide operating more than twenty countries, which is something that will probably give your business a big boost.

https://youtu.be/EK7yfpFytO8