Meet the startups of EIT Digital’s Accelerator and Innovation Factory that exhibited at its flagship conference Grow Digital

Being an entrepreneur or a business owner is not easy. One has to constantly try to increase their network and knowledge. That is exactly what the EIT Digital Conference delivers. It is too good of an opportunity to miss when you get the chance to see hundreds of deep tech firms, hear from professionals in the field, and meet with other entrepreneurs or investors, all in one day. 

The conference offers everything needed to expand your knowledge about the state of European deep tech innovations.

About EIT Digital and EIT Digital Accelerator

Launched in 2010, EIT Digital is a pan-European organisation that promotes innovation, education, and entrepreneurship in digital technology. It aims at global impact through European innovation, boosted by entrepreneurial talent and digital technology. It helps businesses and entrepreneurs to be at the frontier of digital innovation by providing them with technology, talent, and growth support.

Since its launch in 2014, the EIT Digital Challenge has attracted more than 2,900 entries from all over Europe.

EIT Digital Accelerator provides tailor-made growth support by helping them raise capital, find customers, and scale up internationally. This is done through a distributed team of business developers and fundraising experts operating from 10 European countries. Since 2012, the EIT Digital Accelerator has supported startups and scaleups from 20 countries that have raised over €1B in investment.

EIT Digital’s Innovation Factory

The Innovation Factory programme invests in pan-European entrepreneurial teams together with EIT Digital partners to build digital innovations and new ventures in strategic focus areas, including digital industry, digital cities, digital finance, digital wellbeing, and digital tech.

Every year EIT Digital issues a call for proposals to European innovators and entrepreneurs for innovation activities that will be reviewed and selected to enter the Innovation Factory programme. Selected companies are embedded in EIT Digital’s ecosystem and receive a financial co-investment to package their technology, sign up customers and attract investors.

Startups exhibited at EIT Digital Conference (Grow Digital) 2022

We have listed the names of companies from the EIT Digital Accelerator and Innovation Factory programmes that presented themselves at the EIT Digital Conference (Grow Digital) 2022, which took place from May 31 to June 1, 2022.

Checkpoint Cardio

Founded in 2014 by Boris Dimitrov, Checkpoint Cardio is a Bulgarian company that has created patented wearables. These wearables enable continuous streaming of cardiac and other important physiological data, offering a complete solution for online diagnosis, cardiovascular disease prevention, and emergency response. 

The company claims it is one of the “most cutting-edge telemedicine systems” for the real-time monitoring and transfer of medical data.

Checkpoint Cardio was awarded a national prize for the most innovative company in Bulgaria in 2017, and its health monitoring system was ranked among the seven most promising business ventures at the Amsterdam Exhibition ‘The Next Web’, involving more than 12,000 companies.

Workwize

Founded in late 2020, Amsterdam-based Workwize provides organisations with a platform for employees with individual budgets to order products and services for their home offices, such as ergonomic desks, desk chairs, IT products, as well as coffee. Its current clients include Otrium, Mollie and Rocket Delivery.

The company was founded when entrepreneurs Michiel Meyer, Victor Dik, Sebastiaan Scholten, and Dirk Kranendijk realised the growing demand for hybrid working models needed to be met.

In January 2022, Workwize raised €1.5M to further expand across Europe and grow its team. Prior to that, it had raised €600K in seed capital in May 2021.

YAS.life​

Founded in 2016 by Magnus Kobel and Saqib Hanif, Berlin-based YAS.life is a B2B company that aims to become the leading digital health service provider for life and health insurance plans by rewarding a healthy lifestyle.

The company has built an advanced technology solution that enables health insurers to become real digital health companions to their policyholders. YAS.life’s end-to-end white-labelled solution can be fully customised to the insurer’s look and feel, and comes with a data-intensive cloud-based backend. 

The app is provided to the policyholder without charge and can be integrated into all popular wearables, fitness trackers, and smartwatches. The insured are then motivated to live a better lifestyle by a series of incentives and gamification features. 

For rewards, YAS.life has established long-term partnerships with several European businesses that provide services and goods in the fields of physical exercise, good nutrition, and mental health.

In addition to the app itself, YAS.life also provides a complete set of services, ranging from technical operations to partner management.

MIPU

Founded in 2012, Italy-based MIPU is a group of companies whose common mission is to bring prediction into factories and cities to reduce waste and costs  for sustainability and social inclusion.

To optimise industrial operations and processes, the firm offers AI and predictive analytic solutions. Based on its expertise in energy efficiency, predictive maintenance, dependability, and predictive modelling, the firm provides a wide range of services, solutions, and training.

VersaBox

Founded in 2013 by Jacek Królik, Jakub Michalski, Mateusz Wiśniowski, Michał Walęcki, and Rafał Chojecki, VersaBox designs and manufactures autonomously guided vehicles for industrial and consumer applications.

The Polish company claims to fill out the growing human workforce deficits with efficient, intelligent devices and enable productivity improvements through a new generation of agile intralogistics processes (Intralogistics 4.0). It does that by implementing systems of collaborative autonomous robotic units, orchestrated by an innovative process management platform.

Cubbit

Cubbit was born in 2016 from an idea of four university students – Marco Moschettini, Stefano Onofri and Alessandro Cillario, joint-CEOs, and Lorenzo Posani, advisor and PhD. They were united by the ambition to create an important provider of distributed cloud services in the world, guaranteeing the highest level of privacy by design and without the use of expensive and polluting data centres.

Cubbit is a datacenter-free cloud provider that transforms underutilised internet resources into the most private, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly cloud services on the market. Notably, the business received funding from the European Commission and gained prominence on a global scale.

According to Cubbit, it is the only cloud service provider that does not keep users’ files in centralised, exclusive data centres. Instead, consumers have the option to store data in a 100 per cent private and secure cloud environment, thanks to the company’s distributed technology, which prevents 40,000 kg of CO2 emissions annually (per PB stored).

Talking about how the scaleup plans to use its collaboration with the EIT Digital Accelerator, Stepano Onofri explains, “The overall strategic goal for Cubbit is to scale and spread our technology to gain a competitive edge with the non-European innovators in the distributed cloud space. It is vital that we lead the way, and despite the much fewer resources that have been invested in this industry here in the EU so far, we can make it.”

The company has raised €3.3M from multiple investors and grants, supporting deep tech R&D. It counts Techstars and Barclays amongst its global partners.

iGenius

Founded in 2016 by Uljan Sharka, Milan-based iGenius is a scale-up that is on a mission to reimagine data interaction for businesses. With the help of Artificial Intelligence, the company creates products to simplify the relationship between people and data.

In January this year, the startup launched its augmented analytics tool, Crystal. It is a virtual advisor for data intelligence on Google Cloud, aiming to accelerate the adoption of cloud and data intelligence technologies, speeding up digital transformation for small and mid-sized companies, financial institutions and large manufacturing companies.

With this development, the difficulty that iGenius seeks to address is how to expand access to corporate data beyond IT teams, guaranteeing that even teams with limited data literacy can obtain the information they require to make better, quicker choices based on data.

According to Gartner, data literacy will become an evident and necessary asset for companies by 2023. iGenius has been recognised as a 2021 Gartner Cool Vendor in Core AI Technologies, and named in Gartner’s 2021 Market Guide for Augmented Analytics Tools.

Vaimoo

Founded in 2019, Italy-based Vaimoo offers a SaaS enabled platform offering an end-to-end solution for micromobility. The company claims to provide a flexible framework for managing bicycles and electric bikes. 

Its platform includes modules for fleet administration, upkeep, remote diagnostics, booking, payment, and other features. It also has features like geofencing, real-time support for remote diagnostics, simple system integration, etc.

Vaimoo is built on an API platform that assures economic sustainability and quick installation, and the cities of Copenhagen and Rotterdam have already chosen it for their bike-sharing systems. The system can also integrate with third-party systems and enable kick scooter and motorbike schemes.

Nect

Founded in 2017 by Benny Bennet Jurgens and Carlo Ulbrich, German company Nect aims to offer a user-friendly and regulatory-compliant solution for identity confirmation in every area of life.

Nect Ident, an app and AI-based online identity system, was the first use of the patented technology created by Nect in 2018 at R+V Versicherung. Other known businesses have now joined the company’s client base, including ADAC, BARMER, and Telekom Deutschland. 

Besides Nect Ident, the company also provides Nect Sign, a qualified electronic signature (QES) solution; and Nect Wallet, a digital ID wallet that enables instantaneous reuse of the digital identity.

The company says all Nect solutions are centred on data security and data protection. This is assured by the internal development of the software components, the use of German data centres with high-security levels, and the avoidance of cloud solutions.

LMAD – Last Mile Autonomous Delivery

Founded in 2020 by Emmanuel Chaudron, Gergely Horváth and Jean-Philippe Bellaiche, Paris-based LMAD is a last-mile autonomous delivery platform that manages a fleet of autonomous delivery droids.

Last-mile deliveries are getting more and more a challenge in cities as continued growth in e-commerce and high consumer expectations for faster and frequent deliveries are causing traffic congestion and are increasing carbon pollution.

The company says it worked on three pilot experiments in 2021:

1. Deliveries to end customers with an autonomous robot in a dense urban area in Helsinki, together with DB Schenker: In this experiment, the company helped DB Schenker extend their delivery options in the Jätkäsaari district, and delivered parcels to customers in the last quarter of 2021.
2. Deliveries to Nokia staff members at the Nokia Bell Labs Paris-Saclay campus in France, a private R&D facility: LMAD is currently in the testing phase of this project and anticipates making its first delivery in 2022.
3. Deliveries to EDF staff at one of the company’s research and development centres, Les Renardières in France: the company aims to start distributing this experiment to staff later in 2022, while it is still in its testing phase.

According to LMAD, it’ll work on an experiment with a Level 4 autonomous vehicle in the centre of a French city in 2022. The company expects it to be a major breakthrough for the French autonomous delivery landscape.

ART – Out of the Frame

ART helps create a technological platform that is based on Extended Reality (XR) technologies to support tour operators and event planners in creating a special trip for passengers from the destination dream to the on-site experience.

Extended reality (XR) is a universal term inclusive to immersive learning technologies virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR).

With ART, tour operators will have the capability to create, in agency or remotely, an engaging experience for their customers by showing 2D-3D contents in 3D virtual environments. ART also provides the opportunity to design shared Augmented Reality experiences that combine artistic locations with virtual tour guides and digital contents.

This project is developed with partners Fifthingenium, Politecnico di Milano, and Technische Universität Berlin with the support of the EIT Digital.

Ellure

Founded in 2019 by Mark van Almkerk and Selah Li, Ellure is a startup supported by the EIT Digital Innovation Factory. It enables made-to-order production of FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) on a mass scale.

Co-founder Selah Li says, “The mission of Ellure is to enable brands and retailers to offer affordable customised products to everyone. The innovation we are building is a platform for mass customisation. We have both hardware and software, and the first application we are using it for, is cosmetics.”

The company’s D2C brand Ellurelipsticks, which allows users to virtually try out 10,000 hues of lipstick before ordering the one they want, is how Ellure attracts attention to their solution. Besides, its solution also has a range of liquid-based products, from detergents to shampoos, that can be personalised by the customer.

The solution has attracted the attention of a major US retailer, who saw the tremendous potential of the offering.

Three services make up Ellure’s platform, which enables this kind of customised, adaptable production: first, an AR tool that enables people to digitally design and build items. Then, the “digital recipe” of the product will be sent to a network of IoT-enabled machines (such as Ellure’s cosmetic printer) to manufacture the final product. The process happens in real-time and within minutes. And third, Ellure also offers a monitoring service for brands and retailers, who can analyse production flow in real-time.

Currently, Ellure is piloting with a major beauty retailer that has more than 1000 stores to test the opportunities of offering affordable customised products to everyone. Meanwhile, the company is also seeking further investment, and has several other pilots in the pipeline.

Greenhabit

Founded by Mark Linders and Chantal Linders, Dutch company Greenhabit was launched within the EIT Digital Innovation Factory to help people who have diabetes and cardiac conditions to stick to their rehabilitation programmes. 

“The key is to support people with handling stress, managing their attitude and mood, and meeting their social needs – to improve their ability to change,” says the company.

The company employs a scientific approach to behavioural change. When a customer joins, they receive a full kit in the mail, including a training book, a water bottle, a booklet for journaling and the rules of the game. They are also instructed to download the Greenhabit app.

By providing daily activities and rewarding progress, the app employs gamification to keep users interested. Greenhabit is able to pinpoint patients’ requirements with the use of AI in order to address the root cause of bad behaviour.

The initial programme lasts 12 weeks since research indicates that this is how long it takes for someone to become conscious of their bad behaviours and decide to alter them. Participants can enrol in the “For Life” programme as well to maintain their newly formed, healthier behaviours after 12 weeks.

The startup has already sold a mindset version of its product to around 100 employers in the Netherlands who give the system to their employees as a health benefit. Besides, a significant Dutch organisation for Occupational Safety and Health also adopted the solution, offering it to individuals as software-as-a-service and a tool for prevention.

Additionally, the business also collaborated with a Dutch pharmacy to offer blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar checks to Greenhabit users. To support its intentions to expand outside of the Netherlands and into Germany by next year, and the entire EU by 2024, the startup is looking for financing of €8M.