According to the United Nations, 55 per cent of the world’s population currently lives in urban areas. But the proportion is expected to increase to 68 per cent by 2050.
As a result, city governments are looking to stimulate innovation and sort out plans to tackle the challenges that arise from a migrating urban population. As the urban population is growing at a rapid phase, there is a pressing need to scale the cities.
Scale Cities, in collaboration with Unknown Group, has launched a new initiative to support scale-ups that are solving city challenges in food, energy, waste, and mobility.
Dealmaking Day 2022 is an ideal opportunity for scaleups to connect with an international network of partners, customers, and city governments. Each municipality selected the top, most promising scaleups in the domains of food, water, waste, energy & mobility, to help them scale internationally.
Dealmaking Day 2022 is co-organised by Startup Amsterdam, City of Madrid, Business in Antwerp, Invest in Hamburg, and ScaleUP Porto.
Here are the scale-ups that are participating from Amsterdam, the capital city of the Netherlands.
Quicargo
Founder/s: Avishai Trabelsi, Sam Houwen, Roni Liberman
Quicargo aims to tackle inefficiency in the road freight industry. The Dutch company provides an online marketplace for shippers and carriers to benefit from unutilised truck loading spaces.
The company’s solution monitors available trucks with space from multiple sources, analyses it in real-time, detects shippers’ needs, and creates a database with essential information to instigate business transactions.
Growy
Founder/s: Ard van de Kreeke
Growy (previously GROWx) claims to be the first commercial vertical farm in the Netherlands. Based in Amsterdam, Growy offers vertical farms that are fully automated and run on advanced technology. This allows them to grow the ‘best’ produce there is, anywhere in the world.
According to the company, this labour intensive process will have a lot of tweaking. In a growth cycle of three weeks, there are 100,000 data points and around 1,000 photos for 100 kinds of plants. These data enable them to find out how they can get more vitamins or minerals in a plant by, for instance, adjusting the light it is exposed to.
Together with their partner, digital innovation studio INFO, they’ve developed the Plant Manager, a software package that operates as a Farming as a Service solution for other similar farms.
MX3D
Founder/s: Gijs van der Velden
MX3D develops and creates robotic 3D metal printing technology. The company has developed the first dedicated Robotic Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) software to enable end-to-end, large-scale 3D metal printing.
The company aims to create a tool that allows industry leaders, innovators and professionals to realise new designs at scale in metal.
MX3D has developed MetalXL, the first dedicated Robotic Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) workflow to enable end-to-end, large-scale 3D metal printing.
Aectual
Founder/s: Hedwig Heinsman
Aectual develops industrial digital production technologies and software tools to create customisable and affordable building solutions. Meaning, the platform enables rapid, high-quality customised production of 3D printed architectural products at an industrial scale more affordably and sustainably. All products are made from bio-based and/or recycled materials in zero waste and carbon-neutral production.
Cargoroo
Founder/s: Jaron Borensztajn, Erik de Winter, Jelle Maijer
Cargoroo offers shared electric cargo bikes in urban environments. The shared e-cargo bikes offer an essential solution to move both kids and cargo around town. It does this with its fun, sustainable, healthy, and fast alternative to owning a car and also urban logistics.
These electric cargo bikes are available at fixed locations and can be rented via the app. As of now, over 400 electric cargo bikes are deployed in 10 different cities.
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