Keep an eye out in 2018 for these five upcoming deep tech ventures : the EIT Digital Challenge winners

Last year, EIT Digital has been searching for Europe’s best deep technology ventures in five key areas: Digital Industry, Digital Wellbeing, Digital Finance, Digital Cities and Digital Infrastructure. And at the end of 2017, The company awarded five scaleups to support their international growth in 2018 and beyond.

These companies received a prize package worth €100.000, consisting of one year support in the EIT Digital Accelerator and €50.000 in cash. Needless to say, these are the five tech scaleups to look out for in 2018.

Cleverciti

This scaleup from Munich, which won the Digital Cities category of the challenge, provides a sensor technology that points drivers via an app to free parking spots in cities. Subsequently, this does not only reduce the search traffic in cities, but it also reduces air pollution. The implementation of Cleverciti’s technology leads to an overall improvement of the quality of life in the big city.

Lexplore

Scaleup Lexplore is a personal favorite of mine. The Swedish Digital Wellbeing winner has developed a technology using artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify dyslexia in a child as early as in elementary school. It should be noted that, while the company identifies children that could have dyslexia, this process does not include a final diagnosis. In an interview with Fredrik Wetterhall, CEO, and co-founder of Lexplore, he stated that this is something which many people tend to be confused about.

Trinckle 3D

This one should be known to you already, as we already covered a separate story on the German Digital Industry winner. Summarising, Trinckle eases the entire design process of 3D printed products and lowers the entry barrier to 3D printing significantly with its cloud-based platform ‘paramate’. Based on a powerful set of algorithms, paramate enables endless possibilities for product configuration.

Optiopay

Optiopay revolutionizes the way people receive money with a platform that enables businesses to offer beneficial payout options, such as higher-value gift vouchers to their clients. This Digital Finance winner, based in Berlin, aims to become the number one processor for companies paying individuals. OptioPay addresses sectors such as banking, insurance, utilities, e-commerce and HR departments.

ApiOmat

Finally, Digital Infrastructure winner ApiOmat enables companies to integrate their enterprise IT systems with mobile devices and wearables, allowing them to rapidly create apps that innovate their business. The scaleup from Leipzig reduces the time needed for digital services to reach the market, enables rapid prototyping and helps companies to digitally transform their business processes.

Great potential

While the big winner of this year’s EIT Digital Challenge was definitely Germany, the overall quality of participating scaleups was very impressive. “We’ve set this year’s eligibility criteria very high”, says Dominik Krabbe, Lead of the EIT Digital Challenge. “The quality of the finalists and their technology solutions were impressive. We have seen excellent companies with a great potential to scale up internationally. We will be working closely together with them to accelerate their growth in 2018 and create the next European success stories.”

In total, 136 scaleups from 20 different EU countries participated. And as 2018 moves forward, we will be sure to keep an eye on the progress of these five scaleups as well.