The Netherlands is synonymous with bikes, cheese, clogs, canals, and windmill but now the touristic country has also added one more feather to its colorful wings – the innovative startups. As per industry experts, Amsterdam, Delft, Rotterdam, Hague, Utrecht, and Eindhoven are becoming biggest tech hubs for mission-driven startups in Europe. And the inventive minds of the country are giving sleepless nights to the competition sitting in Silicon Valley.
Recently, at the TNW’s annual conference in Amsterdam – Silicon Canals met some mind-blowing startups from Holland and we think you should know about them too. Below, we take a look at the top list of Dutch tech startups who participated in the event.
#1 Welbo Robots
Founded in 2016, Welbo creates social robots which continue to learn and grow in order to transform offices and public spaces. The Amsterdam-based startup believes that quality of hospitality is inconsistent and reception processes are old fashioned, hence Welbo robots, one of them which we met – Pepper – is a social robot which welcomes visitors in multiple languages, registers them and provides them with their visitor’s pass.
#2 Mapiq
Founded by Sander Schutte, Mapiq helps to optimize your workspace, to uncover the full potential of your people with the help of their unified cloud-platform.
As, traditional offices are not yet equipped to facilitate the new way of working hence, it hampers productivity and leaves space underutilized. The Delft-based company thinks with the right technology in place, work environments can be efficient and bring out the best in people.
Thus, Mapiq aims to turn a dull office building into a state-of-the-art workplace. Mapiq’s modular platform gives employees a great day at work (find team members, the best workplaces, meeting rooms etc).
#3 InsureApp
InsureApp is the world’s first lifestyle-based insurance and offers a revolutionary approach to customer engagement. The Utrecht-based startup blends with its user’s lifestyle-patterns and adapt to their real-time needs by offering individualized and on-demand insurance.
#4 Food Story
This startup is working on a very unique and very useful concept for the hotel/restaurant business. FoodStory is the first AR-powered 3D Menu offering ability to showcase food as holograms and gather data/insights on a micro-(dish)-level. It sometimes, difficult for customers to order food or book a table somewhere and not know what the food looks like when consumers eat and choose with their eyes.
Hence, the Amsterdam-based company has built an AR Menu, with which users can visualize the food dishes as holograms projected making is highly realistic to the actual dish. Interesting! Isn’t it?
#5 HoloFil
Another ground-breaking tech concept! Now this time, it’s a device. Dubbed as Holofil, it is a 3D visualization tabletop device that the company claims to capture users attention 5 times better than a flat screen. Founded by Mrunal Gawade, Holographic 3D display device creates realistic 3D visuals targeted towards branding, product promotions, education, training, and memorable user experience.
It’s a product of Artosci, an Amsterdam Science Park-based startup Dutch company and it could be used in different scenarios including businesses, home users, education, gaming, etc. to create experiences in branding, entertainment, educational usage, and more.
#6 Quicargo
Quicargo, which is a B2B online marketplace for empty spaces in trucks is doing really well. The Amsterdam-based company received a €900k seed investment, in April 2018. The investment came from a group of Dutch and German logistics experts and angel investors, including previous investors. Further, Quicargo also plans to mark its entry to the UK very soon.
The leading Dutch-logistic startup, Quicargo which has recently announced its plan to open operations in Belgium and Germany was also part of the TNW conference held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands recently.
#7 Sensiks
Another device, straight out of a sci-fi movie! The Amsterdam-based Sensiks is all about ‘Sensory Reality’ technology. The Sensiks cabins (sensor reality pods) from Vugt give VR a whole new meaning: not only visually, but also with sound, smell and air. All your senses are stimulated, once you’re inside the Sensiks pod. With these single-occupancy pods, the Dutch company hopes to revolutionize the treatment of dementia, PTSD, and brain damage.
#8 Nerdalize
Nerdalize is a technology company that offers sustainable energy solutions to power computers and generate heat. The company offers The Nerdalize heater, an innovative e-radiator drawing its power from large computer cooling systems to be an affordable heating solution for residential and commercial customers, putting excess heat to good use. The company claims this is both sustainable & very cost effective making our cloud 50% more affordable.
Nerdalize was founded by Boaz Leupe, Mathijs de Meijer, and Florian Schneider in 2013.
#9 TicTag
The Arnhem based startup has developed a multitouch smart tag like a stamp that can create a connection between offline world and smartphones or any touch device (hidden Multitouch Fingerprint).
Founded in 2015 by Pieter Heersink TicTag aims to help people to perform their daily activities without the hassle of taking their wallets, keys or cards with them. The company is currently targeting at retail, leisure, and engineering and will also focus on security, automotive and payments in the near future.
TicTag has already raised €300,000 in a seed-round from a group of informal investors, HighTechXL and Greven Investments recently.
#10 Wizzymaps
The Amsterdam-based startup is an online map platform that goes beyond Google maps, precisely for those specific locations where the user expects a high level of service and wants to search more in detail. Basically, Wizzymaps makes it easy to create the best online maps – 4G or Wi-Fi – for events and specific location including shopping centers, airports or museums.
Stay tuned to Silicon Canals for more updates in the tech startup world.
