InvestHorizon pitch: 8 start-ups to watch!

Couldn't make it to the InvestHorizon pitch session that was held last month? No problem! We've put together a convenient digest of those very promising innovative companies worth watching. 

SolarGaps- World’s first external Venetian blinds with built-in solar panels that produce electricity - Ukraine

Since 2015 SolarGaps has been on a mission to generalize energy by making it cheaper and accessible to all. They are pioneering a method of energy distribution that aims to power offices, homes, and cities of the future by exploring innovative concepts and adopting new technologies to reach the net-zero goal.

How so? Installed on the outside of homes and offices, blinds track the sun, providing active shading while generating enough energy to reduce power bills by up to 30%. Their max efficiency mode ensures the most efficient sun energy capture while shading. Moreover, it is also possible to program the smart blinds to adjust it to your daily routine and control them remotely from anywhere with a smartphone. Then, you can even make it a part of your smart home or integrate it into your building management system.

In 2019 the start-up received the InterSolar Award in the category of Smart Renewable Energy at InterSolar Munich. The European Commission has also awarded them a 1M € grant in relations to the Horizon 2020 Programme. Lastly, their product has been recognized by the GermanDesignAward2020 as Excellent Product Design in the category of Building and Elements.

To keep allowing more households and commercial buildings to utilize window areas for green energy generation and reduce electricity bills and CO2 emissions, Solargaps is looking for partners and investors to support their B2B development through fundraising of 0,4-1,4M Euro.

WeCo - Ecological, water-saving, public flush toilets - France

The global lack of water forces us to rethink our toilets and sanitation. This is the challenge WeCo is tackling with its water recycling autonomous toilets.

Created in 2014 by Cécile Dekeuwer with 8 shareholders who also wanted to create water flush toilets in line with the climate change issues. This great and diversified team of sales, marketing, and industry people succeed to create innovative, sustainable and autonomous toilets. Thanks to its superb engineering team, WeCo innovates with wastewater technologies for toilets with a closed water loop, recycling the wastewater on-site. 

Therefore, water waste issued from the toilets with the flush and excrements are treated on-site via a biological treatment on the fecal sludge. Then an electrochemical reactor kills the bacteria and clarifying the water, producing drinkable quality water for flushes or watering the plants or cleaning. This patented innovation is the first one to treat and recycle the black water within less than 2 hours and through a reduced size technology of 2 m3. Lastly, their relevant market has been evaluated at 6 Billion USD by the Boston Consulting Group. 

While keeping focusing on the development of their product, WeCo won various innovation prizes in Europe and China. Incubated by Climate KIC, they also won the EU SME Instrument –phase 1 and, is accelerated by Invest Horizon “fast track to Series A investment” for its 2M€ equity fundraising. Then, WeCo files patents of wastewater treatment technologies and selects its subcontractors to industrialize. To finance the development of their technologies, WeCo seeks equity to become soon a leader in Europe and later reach and scale in emerging countries. WeCo has now clear assets to succeed in this global market, with a scalable innovation that is the only one fostering user acceptance, customer pains and raising up to the climate change issues. To become and keep a leadership position in Reinvented Toilets in Europe and reach the large risky emerging countries markets, they are raising 2M€ equity.

BioCover- reduction of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Landfills by use of Engineered Bio-covers - Denmark

BioCover A/S is a Danish limited company founded in 2009 by majority owner and CEO Morten Toft.

Germany is a high-intensity agricultural country. The high animal density has become a problem. Too many animals create too much organic manure, to such an extent that the lands and the plants cannot absorb all the nutrients. Then, they leach into the groundwater or spread into the air as emissions and land insensitive nature areas or water streams. This creates problems for biodiversity and human health. The EU commission has set a limit on this pollution through several Directives. Germany is not in compliance with them and they are now – by court order - being forced to implement sustainable technologies to become more environmentally friendly and achieve legal compliance.

As the Danish government has identical issues such as reducing its ammonia emissions, BioCover A/S was born. From this, the SyreN system emerged as a vision that excess emissions could be turned into fertilizer and increase profits. The system turned out to be able to capture then convert 80 % of ammonia emission and transfer it to the more stable ammonium. Furthermore, the system supplies an inexpensive source of Sulphate fertilizer while increasing the plant-available phosphorus.

BioCover A/S has started its expansion into the Germany market, but do not have the financial capabilities to meet the market demands in the coming years while developing their products. They are, therefore, searching for capital investments or partnerships of 3.5 Mio € to meet the demands for scale-up in the coming years.

MAKEiS - Advanced Thermal Insulation Technology - Bulgaria

MAKEiS is a new way for thermal insulation of buildings, making the process 3x faster and 2x more efficient through innovations in high-tech mobile plants and software solutions combined. 

This is why MAKEiS is offered to the market as a service, gathering all participants in the building insulation process - construction companies, architects, owners of the buildings and all the additional services in one place to create a well-working ecosystem. Their segment are applicators of insulation and construction companies worldwide, as their patented technology consists of proprietary hardware, software and IoT platform

The benefits for all MAKEiS users/subscribers are huge because there is no capital investment. MAKEiS increases turnover while providing new opportunities and does not require heavy physical labor. Building owners receive a straight and guaranteed return of investment.

They also offer outsourcing of machine production, know-how (expertise) and process management to partners by setting up joint-ventures around the world.

Awarded with mark of “Excellence in innovation” 2019 by the president of Bulgaria, winner in EU-China Tech Scale-up Summit 2018, Winner in “Climate Launchpad” organized by Climate-KIC.

MAKEiS is designed to be easily adopted anywhere in the world. This gives it the potential for exponential growth. To support their further development, this start-up is looking for a fundraising of 2.9m €.

Inteligg – Smart wearable device to prevent asthma attacks due to poor air quality - Greece

We are breezing 15 000 liter per day and the air is getting more and more polluted because of human industries. People wearing masks is turning usual. The founders of Inteligg have decided to tackle this issue by creating a little box, SmartBox4U. It is a smart integrated solution for vulnerable population groups as a means of preventing potential asthma attacks and effects on human health. It combines a wearable electronic gadget for air quality monitoring and real-time alerting with a smartphone App enabling users to plan the day with self-confidence by providing updated contamination information with city-coverage in advance, before visiting a certain place or following a certain route.

The founding members have a mechanical, electrical, aerospace and computer engineers background with extensive experience in national and international research and system development projects, focusing on social innovation, sustainable mobility, and economy, environmental impact assessment, energy efficiency, and renewable energy, as well as ICT solutions.

Awarded by the European Commission with the Seal of Excellence and finalist of the MIT Enterprise Forum Greece Start-up Competition in 2019, the Greek company is looking for 650 000€.

Kray Technology – Drone spraying technology to replace conventional ground sprayers and agricultural planes - Ukraine

Muck spreading is a very important step for a qualitative harvest, it goes through a combination of a good time, dose and an appropriate spreader which has a real impact on the homogeneity of the crop. Kray Technology manufactures the world’s first automatic drones for crop protection and fertilization of field crops with industrial productivity (up to 470 Ha/day), which reduces the cost of application by 90%.

The team received the first feedback from the market at WebSummit in Dublin in 2015 - when several farmers enthusiastically praised the drone prototype as a revolution in the agro-industry. Subsequent calculations of Kray crop protection and nutrition platform usage scenarios showed that the solution potential is to reduce application cost by 90% or to increase yields by 20-40%.

The drone flies at a height of 1 m above the surface at speeds up to 30 m / s automatically. Flight safety is achieved using special computer vision technologies that process data from cameras, lidar, and other sensors. As a result of the treatment, the drone "sees" 100 meters ahead, recreating the terrain and identifying obstacles.

Winner of the Startup Grind 2020 that is selecting the 15 best Ukrainian startups and finalist of 2019 EIT Food Accelerator Network the Ukrainian start-up is looking for 500 000€.

Hybrid Airplanes – Hybrid flying device with very low energy consumption - Germany

Drones flying in the sky is now commonplace, but their place in the public areas is threatened by more and more legislation and a lack of battery autonomy. So now, imagine you could analyze every place on earth from the stratosphere or lower with a reusable device carried by the wind and solar energy? This is a challenge that Hybrid Airplane is tackling. The start-up has created a low-speed flying autonomous observation for civil needs, far better than traditional observation systems.

H-aero is a new sustainable flight concept, economically friendly UAVs that fulfil long missions, which today have to be done by manned aerial carriers, like helicopters or planes. These missions can be the analysis of large areas for agriculture, resource exploration surveys, forestry and many more. Its application can go from reconnaissance to exploration or communication.

Winner of the Copernicus Masters 2017 and finalist at the Innovation Award of the German Aviation Industry, the German company is looking for 2.5M€.

Geolith – Clean and sustainable production of lithium - France

The demand for lithium is expected to be multiplied by 6 to 8 over the next 10 years. Its production is a strategic field but is also creating debates as its extraction is not clean and has harmful consequences on the ground and the planet preservation. To meet this demand, GEOLITH is developing an innovative process for the direct extraction of lithium from brines, unlocking access to multiple sources around the world, currently not economical.

The technology developed in partnership with Mines ParisTech, is efficient, simple and clean. It applies to geothermal brines from the Rhine Valley, currently brought to surface from more than three-thousand-meter depth to produce energy before being returned to the depth of earth. GEOLITH process simply captures lithium in circular economy as a by-product of renewable energy production. It ensures local sources of lithium to secure the supply to our growing battery industry.

GEOLITH brings together a team of experienced professionals and passionate researchers, willing to develop a new clean and job-creating sector.

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