Innovative ideas can bring you one step closer to success. With this understanding, many Dutch startups have come up with unique technology ideas that solve major challenges faced by society today.
And this is where KvK Innovation Top 100 – an initiative that operates with the mission to showcase what SMEs are capable of in the Netherlands – comes to play.
The Kamer van Koophandel (KvK) is the Chamber of Commerce in the Netherlands. It is an independent administrative body that informs, advises and supports businesses and manages the Commercial Register. On its website, it says, “Our mission is to make life easier for you as an entrepreneur.”
The KvK announced the winner of its 16th Chamber of Commerce Innovation Top 100. All innovations were assessed on impact for society and industry, originality, availability, realised turnover and growth potential.
The Winner
This year’s winner of the 16th Chamber of Commerce Innovation Top 100 is Heerewaarden-based Grown.bio. The winner can call itself the most innovative SME in the country for a year, however, the other 99 innovative companies can also be justifiably proud of the place that has been conquered.
Grown.bio has developed a sustainable alternative to polystyrene foam. It grows polystyrene from the roots of mushrooms, mycelium, on a substrate of agricultural waste. Mycelium can grow on almost any substrate. Grown.bio mixes it with agricultural waste and uses this to fill molds in which mycelium and the agricultural fibers grow together.
After five days, it grows enough to be dried and then treated. The result is a sturdy shape that is shock-absorbing, light, water-resistant and fire-resistant.
The product is compostable in nature, which makes mycelium composites the greenest possible packaging material. The material contains no toxic substances and does not come from ‘oil-dependent’ sources, says the company. Now, Grown.bio uses the shapes as packaging material, but it can also be used in buildings, interiors, and the construction sector. The material can float, so it is even suitable for making a surfboard.
The jury, led by Ruud Koornstra, was enthusiastic about Grown.bio’s product. “Biological technology is the most powerful technology available to us and, in the right form, we can use it to live in harmony here on earth. If Grown.bio goes through well, the impact of this innovation will be extreme,” says Koornstra.
KVK Impact Award
Tilburg-based Vodde received the KVK Impact Award. This sock manufacturer gives old textiles – rags – a new life by making all kinds of quality socks.
The company aims for a more sustainable planet. It contributes to this by collecting its raw material in the Netherlands, processing it into yarn, and developing and knitting new socks from it. Vodde makes its yarn from cotton collected by local ‘rag farmers’.
16 Amsterdam-based startups that made it to the list
Optics11
Founder(s): Davide Iannuzzi, Hans Brouwer
Founded in: 2011
Total funding: $297K
Optics11 is a fast-growing high tech company that offers fibre optic sensing systems. Its products are supplied worldwide to various markets such as structural health monitoring, condition monitoring, energy, R&D, rail, defense and more.
Fibre optic sensing outperforms classic electrical technologies in challenging operational environments, such as in strong electrical or magnetic fields, high radiation, extreme temperatures or in liquids. The company’s solutions aim at detecting and monitoring the earliest signs of malfunction of critical structures and providing asset owners with precise and reliable data.
The company was founded as a university spin-off (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) by experimental physics professor Davide Iannuzzi and entrepreneur Hans Brouwer.
OPNT
Founder(s): Jeroen Koelemeij, Marco Gorter
Founded in: 2014
Total funding: $2.5M
OPNT (Optical Positioning, Navigation and Timing) is a spin-off company of LaserLaB at VU University Amsterdam. OPNT is on a mission to relocate all current GPS-based services ‘from the sky’ to the telecommunication network.
The company has invented a backup system for GPS that can prevent problems – White Rabbit Switch – the world’s first secure and reliable GPS backup system. It runs through telecom networks. Until OPNT invented this, no reliable solution existed. OPNT’s services include accurate time measurement for telecom, 5G and cybersecurity.
ParkBee
Founder(s): Jian Jiang, Tom Buchmann
Founded in: 2013
Total funding: $7.5M
ParkBee makes underused parking locations digitally accessible to the public. Its app allows drivers to locate and reserve available spaces in off-street car parks and be directed to those spaces through the ParkBee app and affiliates such as Google Maps.
With more than 400 affiliated parking locations in four countries and many collaborations with parking apps and parking providers, ParkBee reaches millions of users and provides them with a parking space.
Reflow
Founder(s): Jasper Middendorp, Lyndsey Lewis, Rahul Mehendiratta, Ronan Hayes
Founded in: 2015
Total funding: $517K
Reflow is a social enterprise dedicated to tackling plastic pollution while creating innovative, scalable, design and manufacturing solutions. It converts difficult-to-process waste streams into the highest quality 3D printing material. To do this, it works together with recycling companies, designers and major brands.
Reflow buys traceable plastic waste (fishing nets, unused lenses, bottles) and processes it into filament to sell to customers with 3D printers. In this way, the company enables producers to realise sustainable products that make an impact. The goal is to use technology to convert waste into circular locally produced products.
Kumasi Drinks
Founder(s): Lars Gierveld, Linda Klunder, Rogier Power
Founded in: 2020
Total funding: NA
Kumasi Drinks is a soft drink company that prevents food waste as well as fights poverty. The company claims to have developed a whole new strain, made from a waste product – the pulp of the cocoa fruit from Ghana. Until now, farmers used to throw away this pulp and only used the beans. But Kumasi saw an opportunity here. It pays the cocoa farmers for the pulp and thus fights food waste and poverty. The farmers earn up to 30 per cent more per kilo of cocoa by selling this pulp.
The soft drink that Kumasi makes is available in two variants: the thirst-quencher Sappi and the tantalising Gassi. Both consist purely of juice and water, without additives. The juice contains Magnesium, Vitamin B1, Potassium, and Zinc.
BridgeFund
Founder(s): Rutger Quispel
Founded in: 2018
Total funding: $23.1M
BridgeFund is an online business platform that offers fast business credit to SMEs without the intervention of a bank. The company offers credits up to €250K at an interest of 1.3 per cent per month.
With its technology, a company’s financial data is analysed very quickly, and carefully, to determine how much an entrepreneur can borrow responsibly. The company also allows entrepreneurs to know whether they are qualified for a business loan on the same working day.
Zerocopter
Founder(s): Junior Meijering
Founded in: 2016
Total funding: $1.4M
Zerocopter aims to bring continuous online security to every organisation. The company provides an instant overview of everything that’s happening in an organisation’s security. It uses the skills of the ‘world’s best’ ethical hackers for this.
The researchers look for unknown vulnerabilities and report them in the Zerocopter platform. This provides organisations with a toolset that adds ‘powerful’ security capabilities to the software delivery process.
The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company works in a different way: customers do not pay for the investigation time, but per detected vulnerability. In this way, more can be invested in the solution to the problem.
Solar Sedum
Founder(s): Matthijs Bourdrez
Founded in: 2012
Total funding: NA
Solar Sedum believes that rooftops have great potential to bring nature back into the city and also to generate sustainable energy. “We believe in both delivering value to our customers and having a positive impact on society,” says the company on its website.
In 2014, Solar Sedum’s product, the Airframe, was developed in collaboration with students from TU Delft. It allows solar panels to be optimally placed above a green roof. This helps the green roof to be used as ballast for the solar panels and air, light and water are taken into account for the plants. This makes it possible to realise both technologies on the same roof surface.
In addition, the roof surface lasts longer and the roof environment is cooled so that the solar panels work more efficiently and also last longer. The annual CO2 reduction of Solar Sedum Energy Roofs in the Netherlands is now more than 400,000 kg CO2.
ZonnepanelenDelen
Founder(s): Matthijs Olieman, Sven Pluut
Founded in: 2012
Total funding: $550K
ZonnepanelenDelen is a financing platform for solar-energy projects. It brings initiators and investors together, accelerating the energy transition in the Netherlands. The company helps with the realisation of projects by taking care of financing, contracting, administration, and management. Anyone can invest in and benefit from solar energy projects via ZonnemetaalDelen. This results in more solar energy projects being realised.
The platform connects two sides. For example, entrepreneurs or schools that want to install their buildings’ roofs with solar panels but are short on capital, are connected with private individuals who would like to invest in such a project. The company says, the investor enjoys a stable return and receives their investment back. One can participate for €25.
Lalaland
Founder(s): Michael Musandu, Ugnius Rimsa
Founded in: 2019
Total funding: $755K
Lalaland uses artificial intelligence (AI) to develop highly realistic digital photo models for e-commerce applications for clothing and fashion brands. The Dutch company uses neural networks to generate images of artificial humans.
It helps fashion brands and retailers create a personalised and inclusive shopping experience by generating a virtual fashion model of different body types, sizes, hair types, and skin complexions closest to the shopper’s preference.
Optics11Life
Founder(s): Davide Iannuzzi, Hans Brouwer
Founded in: 2011
Total funding: $297K
Optics11Life addresses key instrumentation needs for the future of medical treatment. Developments based on 3D cell culture such as organoids and engineered tissues will improve drug development, regenerative medicine, and diagnostics processes. The company provides enabling technology to drive these developments forward, and to help understand, optimise and monitor these emerging processes so that they can improve medical treatment.
Grunten
Founder(s): Berend Eberson
Founded in: 2018
Total funding: NA
More than 90 per cent of the Netherlands eat less than the recommended daily amount of vegetables per day and more than half of the population is now overweight; Grunten aims to change that.
The company’s Veggie Oats are oatmeal products with at least 40 per cent vegetables but in the taste of a cake. Grunten says that these Veggie Oats are simple and tasty to eat and provide 25 per cent of the recommended daily amount of vegetables per serving.
Kryha
Founder(s): Tobias Disse, Thom Bergman, Haischel Dabian
Founded in: 2017
Total funding: Bootstrapped
Kryha empowers enterprises to improve their ESG performance by reinventing supply chain collaboration. Its solutions allow customers to trace materials and confidentially share verified ESG data across supply chains, providing actionable insights. This enables companies to take strides in achieving their SDGs and enhance their market positioning through ESG excellence.
The company says, on average, only 9 per cent of global plastic waste is recycled. And despite there being incentives to increase that percentage, the current waste management infrastructure cannot cope with the associated volumes. This leads to organisations receiving fines or compensating for their production by purchasing plastic credits. With the digital platform Circularity in Plastics from Kryha, companies can comply with this – more plastic waste is recycled and sustainability is cheaper.
Skytree
Founder(s): Alexander Gunkel, Max Beaumont
Founded in: 2010
Total funding: $660K
The air conditioning in an electric car consumes energy and use in summer and winter is at the expense of the range. Skytree has developed a new technology to recirculate the air in the cabin to the maximum, without the build-up of CO2, pollutants and without fogging up the windows.
The company offers a Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology that filters CO2, H20, and other (polluting) substances from the air. With the first application, Skytree focuses on automotive, but in the future, it is working on a broad deployment of this real platform technology. This includes trains, buses, and aircraft, but also the air treatment systems of large buildings and homes.
Focus Orange Technology
Founder(s):
Founded in: 2007
Total funding:
The smart technology solution Crunchr People Analytics from Focus Orange Technology BV provides employers with tools to increase labour productivity and improve employee satisfaction.
Most organisations have a wealth of personnel data in various systems: payroll, assessment, absenteeism, training and development systems and employee satisfaction. This data is used for processes, such as recording training and measuring satisfaction. However, Focus Orange believes that more is possible when this data is combined and intelligently analysed.
Crunchr has developed a scalable solution for this, based on mathematics and artificial intelligence. It translates millions of data points into actionable insights into people and organisations, for the past, present and future.
Wilder Land
Founder(s): Daan van Diepen, Matthijs Westerwoudt
Founded in: 2019
Total funding: NA
Wilder Land makes herbal tea from herbs and flowers sown by farmers in the Netherlands. The company’s aim is to restore Dutch biodiversity.
Most herbal teas that are drunk in the Netherlands come from abroad, but they can still grow in the Netherlands. Wilder Land, therefore, works together with farmers to sow as many herbs and weeds as possible. The more (indigenous) herbs and weeds that are sown, the more bees, birds and butterflies will return. This also saves transport and therefore CO2 emissions on tea from abroad.
Drinking tea from Wilder Land directly contributes to the recovery of Dutch biodiversity.
You can view the complete list of the most innovative companies in the Netherlands selected by the Chamber of Commerce Innovation Top 100 2021 here.
01
How Gen Z affects B2B social media