Celo Camp, the virtual acceleration and mentorship program created in partnership by the Celo Foundation and Upright in 2020, hosted startup founders on a shared journey to further Web3 innovation through intentional community building and guided educational experiences.

In addition to receiving fast-track access to Celo grants, prizes in cUSD are awarded to teams and projects to recognize their progress throughout camp, including their projects’ respective impact. Top prizes were decided by a voting process that included input from representatives of Upright, the Celo Foundation, Celo Camp mentors, and the broader Celo community. Congratulations to all!

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Ripe Wins the 1st Place Gold Prize

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During Celo Camp, Ripe built an application that is able to scan QR codes from GCash — the leading e-wallet in the Philippines and accepted by over 139,000 merchants — and to use cUSD from Valora to send Philippine Pesos to the recipient.

About his time at Celo Camp, Sam Silver, co-founder at Ripe, said:

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“Ours is a business reliant on connection and collaboration. Not only did we receive robust community support from the team at Celo Camp, we also met with smart and generous founders interested in partnering with us too. Through the Celo Camp mentorship program, we were connected with the Valora staff who provided amazing support and guidance throughout camp.”

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Ripe continues to work closely with Celo product managers to integrate more natively with Valora, build out their backend transfer and exchange infrastructure, and raise a pre-seed round.