The tech sector in Europe is booming rapidly, making it tough for startups to thrive in the competitive business ecosystem. As of now, innovation is rapid than ever before and is forcing companies to follow the same strategy to be adaptable. In 2019, businesses that are innovative are witnessing ways to prove themselves successful in the current volatile world.
Eventually, startups across industries are trying to bring about innovative solutions to meet consumer and market demands. Doing so, these companies will be able to stay in line with their mission. Notably, small businesses can execute ideas quickly than large organisations, so these can be highly innovative and come up with better-suited solutions that will attract consumers.
Celebrating exceptional innovations and motivating these startups, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) has announced winners of the EIT Awards for this year. The EIT Awards winners were selected by an international jury. Over 400 entrepreneurs, policymakers, and innovators gathered at the EIT Awards ceremony in Budapest.
The EIT Awards ceremony featured 19 nominees from across Europe specialising in categories including climate, food, digitisation, energy, health, and raw materials. Of these, five talented entrepreneurs behind startups that power solutions that address challenges in the climate, energy, health, food, raw materials, and digitisation sectors. With these Awards, EIT encourages entrepreneurs and promote innovation made in Europe.
LeafTech (Germany)
Founders: Michael Dittel
Founded year: 2018
Why its hot: LeafTech’s Michael Dittel won the EIT Change Award. The startup is supported by EIT Climate-KIC. This award recogises top graduates from the EIT education programmes and the winner gets €20k.
LeafTech is a vision to develop data-enhanced building design and control solutions. The company presented the Shading Automation Virtual Sensor, which is easy to implement, precise, and cost effective as compared to conventional hardware solutions.
Diabeloop (France)
Founders: Erik Huneker, Guillaume Charpentier
Funding: €15.5 million
Valuation: €54 million – €81 million
Founded year: 2015
Why its hot: French startup Diabeloop’s Marc Julien won the EIT Innovators Award. Backed by EIT Health, the winner gets €50k. The award recognises teams that come up with high impact products and services in the health sector.
Diabeloop provides patients suffering from type 1 diabetes with a smart therapeutic system, which will regulate blood glucose. It is aimed to improve the daily lives of diabetic patients in Europe and keeps hospitalisation and deaths due to lack of care at the bay.
CorPower Ocean (Sweden)
Founders: Patrik Möller, Stig Lundbäck
Funding: €16.5 million
Valuation: €33 million – €49 million
Founded year: 2009
Why its hot: CorPower Ocean’s Matthew Dickson received the EIT Venture Award and was given rewarded with €50k. The award recognises other successful entrepreneurial startups and scaleups in the energy ecosystem. This company is supported by EIT InnoEnergy.
CorPower Ocean brings a new type of compact Wave Energy Converters that feature a unique mechanical design. It is inspired by the pumping capability of the human heart. This design is combined with advanced control algorithms to make it work as intended.
Trigger.Systems (Portugal)
Founders: Sara Gonçalves
Founded year: 2017
Why its hot: Sara Gonçalves of Trigger.Systems received the EIT Woman Award and has been reaward with €20k. This is also an energy startup supported by EIT InnoEnergy. The EIT Woman Award is meant to recognise outstanding women innovators.
Trigger.Systems, the Portuguese startup works on tackling the excessive use of water in irrigation. It is touted that this represents 70% of the fresh water spent across the world. It designs control systems to be used in agriculture and landscape areas that have inappropriate water consumption values due to mismanagement.
Zeleros (Spain)
Founders: Daniel Orient MartÃ, David Pistoni, Juan Vicén Balaguer
Funding: €200k
Valuation: €600k – €900k
Founded year: 2016
Why its hot: David Perez of Zeleros won the EIT Public Award, which recognises the top innovation of the public with thousands of votes cast across Europe. The company is backed by EIT Climate-KIC.
Zeleros designs and develops new technologies to facilitate efficient and sustainable transportation that will let commuters travel at 1000 km/h with renewable energies from the railway and aeronautics industries.
Main image picture credits: EIT Awards
Stay tuned to Silicon Canals for more European technology news.
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