Subscribe to the newsletter:
A year-round global startup competition, both online and offline, resulted in 100 leading ventures that are driving innovation by fueling, financing, caring for, and building the future at the Global Meetup ’21. These startups are winners of various Get in the Ring events from all over the world. After four Dealmaking Days with a global network of investors, governments and corporates, we move forward to the Pitching Days — starring the Global Meetup ’21 semi-finalists. Over two Pitching Days, the semi-finalist startups met our investment panel to explore scaling opportunities, raise funding, and accelerate their solutions. Without further ado, we’re delighted to present you the 19 ventures that made it to the semifinal:
Energy Chemicals & Materials and Food & Agri Industries
Plastic Back (ISR)
Plastic Back converts plastic waste (back) to crude oil and other valuable chemicals – back to its original form. They create value in waste and are working towards reducing landfills, ocean dumping and burn sites in an economic and environmental-friendly manner.
Solution: Their innovative technology, based on chemical oxidation, is used to attack the plastic polymer and break it down to oils, waxes and other valuable chemicals.
Valuation Category: Heavyweight ($2,500,000 – $10,000,000)
Awards Won: Israel’s Circular Economy Competition (1st place) , HP’s Carbon Neutral Competition (1st place), Shell’s New Energy Challenge (2nd place).
DigiFarmz (BRA)
DigiFarmz is a digital platform based on data that combines climatic information, cultivar genetics, sowing dates, disease biology, location and other parameters, helping farmers, agronomists and consultants in the most intelligent management of soybean.
Solution: The platform guides you on what to use, when to spray, how many sprays to be carried out and on resistance mitigation strategies. The DigiFarmz’s database (crowdsourcing + field research) allows optimizing resources and investments on the best field practices, reducing the impact over the environment and maximizing the crop yield.
Valuation Category: Heavyweight ($2,500,000 – $10,000,000)
Awards Won: India-Brazil Agritech Cross Incubation Program 2019/20, Pontes para Inovação by Embrapa, First Batch of Plug and Play Brazil Acceleration program, BRDE Labs 2020, Capital Empreendedor 2020
FutureFarms (IND)
FutureFarms provide turnkey solutions for large scale precision farming projects – to individuals, companies, and governments. These include making leaf stations for hydroponic cultivation, air buckets for deep water culture, water soluble crop nutrients, growth media like coco peat, rock wool cubes, perilite, etc.
Solution: A comprehensive approach that includes consultancy services, farm design, hydroponic feasibility studies, agronomy training, and operation.
Valuation Category: Heavyweight+ ($10,000,000 – $30,000,000)
Awards Won: Loreal Sustainability Prize, Top 100 Global Start-ups of 2019 by Enterprise Singapore, Cavin Care – Innovation Award for 2020, CII- Startup of the year 2017
QPinch (BEL)
The QPinch heat transformer is a breakthrough heat pump for the process industries (petrochemicals, food & beverages, paper & pulp).
Solution: Their heat transformer helps save over 50% on energy bills for process heat by capturing it, transforming and delivering it as new energy, recovering over 50% of it.
Valuation Category: Heavyweight++ (> $30,000,000)
Awards Won: Emerging Technologies Award Royal Society of Chemistry 2015.
OPT/NET (NLD)
The OPT/NET AI Engine empowers users to rapidly build AI Solutions that deliver real-time insights on any time-series data without a dependence on training data.
Solution: Unlike typical AI approaches, our AI Engine eliminates the need for time consuming labelling tasks and model building. Instead, it builds on a simple pattern interpretation exercise that fits seamlessly into existing workflows from day one.
Valuation Category: Heavyweight ($2,500,000 – $10,000,000)
Awards Won: European Commission Copernicus Security Challenge 2017, European Commission Copernicus Emergency Management Challenge 2018, Top 5 in RPA – AIconics 2018, Top 500 Tech Startups Worldwide – Hello Tomorrow, Top 30 – IBM Watson AI XPRIZE.
LOOP Mission (CAN)
LOOP is a circular economy project created by like-minded dreamers sharing a common goal: to put an end to food waste.
Solution: They give value back to rejected food by transforming it into products like cold pressed juices and smoothies, sparkling water, beer and spirits, soap and seaweed.
Valuation Category: Heavyweight++ (> $30,000,000)
Awards Won: Food Innovation of the Year (Gin LOOP), CTAQ 2020 Sustainability Award, all categories, CTAQ 2020 Winner, Business as a Force for Good award in all categories and in start-up enterprise, INSEAD National Alumni Association of Canada 2020 Finalist New Hope Pitch Slam, Expo West – 2020 Finalist Nexty Awards 2020, Expo West – 2020 Winner innovative beverage of the year and business model all categories, CTAQ 2019 Winner CHFA Launch Pad -2019 Winner Start-up category and public’s favorite, ESTIM – 2018 Prix catégorie démarrage d’entreprise et prix du public, ESTIM – 2018 Catégorie Impact, Lauréat le Grand Saut 2018 Prix la révolution alimentaire 2018, Lauréat Conférence DUX Julie Poitras-Saulnier and David Côté both laureates of arista contest Montreal Young Chamber of Commerce – 2017, Winner of ”Grand prix jeunesse en entreprenariat” Défi OSEntreprendre – 2017, Grand Prix Novae 2017 et Prix Modèle d’affaires Novae 2017.
Vertical Future (GBR)
Vertical Future is an agriculture technology business, designing, building & licensing advanced hardware & software systems on a global scale.
Solution: They empower people and businesses to grow food in a more sustainable, secure, efficient and effective way – closer to the point of consumption and with a lower environmental footprint. They do this through combining our advanced hardware and software solutions with years of growing experience, high-class team, and innovative programme of cross-sector research.
Valuation Category: Heavyweight+ ($10,000,000 – $30,000,000)
Awards Won: Top 9 Companies Driving the UK Green Revolution, Selected by Government as exemplar company representing Green GB Week, Selected to be part of 2020/21 cohort for London Mayor’s International Business Programme
Bioextrax (SWE)
Bioextrax are a BioBacteria-based platform technology for production of environmentally friendly materials, including protein and bioplastics.
Solution: They have patented processes through which we can convert various organic waste/by products (such as molasses, used cooking oil, etc) into the biobased and biodegradable plastic PHA. They also get a co-product from the PHA production process in the form of hydrolyzed single cell protein which can be used as food or feed.
Valuation Category: Heavyweight+ ($10,000,000 – $30,000,000)
Awards Won: Nordic Innovation Fund grant, Venture Cup Sweden Silver medal, Swedish Innovation Agency “Innovative Start-ups” grant, Green Chemistry Sustainability Challenge, Chemport Europe Edition 2020.
Finance & Regulation Industries
Apiax (SWI)
Apiax provides APIs to transform government regulations, industry compliance regulations and other policies into digital rules for financial institutions such as banks, fund managers or fintech company. They create value by providing employees with instant compliance intelligence to any questions they have.
Solution: Their platform allows clients to manage their compliance framework purely digital and digital compliance rules which can be integrated into any application or business process within their organization.
Valuation Category: Heavyweight++ (> $30,000,000)
Awards Won: Swiss FinTech Awards, Luxembourg FinTech Award, Websummit, Singapore FinTech Festival
EAGLYS Inc. (JPN)
EAGLYS Inc.’s technology allows for processing over encrypted data, without ever decrypting it. They create value for customers and their clients by securing data and assuring privacy, while at the same time allowing the direct customer to have access to, exchange, and safely process data that would otherwise be inaccessible or heavily redacted.
Solution: By enabling customers to process private data that they would not be able to access, or exchange previously, EAGLYS help them to widen their insights as well as customer base, while preserving the confidentiality of their clients in turn.
Valuation Category: Heavyweight++ (> $30,000,000)
Awards Won: ICT SPRING EUROPE 2019, Forbes RISING STAR 2019, TechSirius 2019, 未来 2019, EY Innovative Startup 2020, Japan Venture Awards 2020.
Health, Well-being & Education Industries
6Degrees (ISR)
6Degrees is an AI-powered motion based wearable device for Tele-Rehabilitation that enables full-autonomy for people with disabilities.
Solution: They enable people who lost fine motor skills/dexterity due to disabilities or injury accidents to use smartphones, tablets, and other smart devices while providing real-time motion-based insights. Thus, enabling employability, reducing paid care, and providing remote rehabilitation on long term.
Valuation Category: Heavyweight ($2,500,000 – $10,000,000)
Awards Won: Horizon 2020 Phase 1, IIA grant, Creative Business Cup Denmark, Restarting Together, MassChallenge Gold Award, Calling2Scale Health 2020.
Bingli (BEL)
Bingli is an app that interviews the patient in a smart way ahead of the consultation, thus symptoms can be accurately communicated to the doctor. The patient is better prepared and the doctor wins valuable time, which will ultimately lead to better healthcare.
Solution: Their AI-powered chatbot asks patients 70-100% of the doctors questions ahead of the consultation. This empowers patients to answer at their pace and from the comfort of their home. Doctors can then proceed with the consultation better informed and save valuable time. Additionally, they show the doctor an overview of the possible diagnosis and thus offer them decision support.
Valuation Category: Lightweight (< $500,000)
Awards Won: –
Oncompass Medicine (HUN)
Oncompass Medicine are developing AI technologies to choose the most effective targeted therapy for cancer patients.
Solution: They leverage AI technology under the form of a medical device that chooses the right targeted therapy.
Valuation Category: Heavyweight ($2,500,000 – $10,000,000)
Awards Won: –
Elitac Wearables (NLD)
Elitac Wearables develop wearables from idea to commerically viable products, in collaboration with partners from the medical, safety, defense and sports sectors.
Solution: The booming market of wearable technology is quickly securing an important role in every industry. This technology is transforming lives, businesses and the global economy. For example, their BalanceBelt is a health & well-being wearable that uses haptic feedback to help patients suffering from severe balance disorders find their balance and regain their independence.
Valuation Category: Heavyweight ($2,500,000 – $10,000,000)
Awards Won: Defensie Innovatie Competitie, Ondernemer van het Jaar
nQ Medical (USA)
nQ is a computational biotechnology company that captures digital phenotyping, passively, through AI-aided analysis of personal device interactions.
Solution: They have developed digital biomarkers for Parkinson’s disease in early and newly diagnosed/untreated stages of disease — ambient telemetry for early detection, remote disease progression monitoring, and measuring the impact of prescribed therapy (drug, device, or CBT).
Valuation Category: Heavyweight+ ($10,000,000 – $30,000,000)
Awards Won: –
FIND OUT FIRST ABOUT OUR ANNOUNCEMENTS AND EVENTS
Logistics & Mobility and Construction & Manufacturing Industries
Spiral Technology (USA)
Spiral Technology deliver augmented reality platform that helps technicians work 30% faster with lower error rates.
Solution: The mixed reality platform works on headsets like Hololens and provides visualization of hidden structures, step-by-step inspection or maintenance instructions while doing automated quality assurance in the background.
Valuation Category: Heavyweight ($2,500,000 – $10,000,000)
Awards Won: Lufthansa Technik Challenge, Base of the Future Challenge by the US Air Force.
Green Basilisk (NLD)
Green Basilisk add value to concrete through an innovative Healing Agent that make concrete more sustainable and durable by giving it self healing capabilities.
Solution: Concrete is responsible for almost 10% of the CO2 footprint yearly. Their self-healing concrete needs less maintenance, has a longer lifespan, and is easier to apply.
Valuation Category: Heavyweight ($2,500,000 – $10,000,000)
Awards Won: Winner Deutsche Bahn Mindbox Bio-Based Material of 2019 (together with raw material supplier Corbion Finalist Innovation of the year in the construction industry (Cobouw), Finalist Green Challenge (Postcode), Finalist Inventor Award (EU), Winner Bau Innovation(BAUMA Munich 2019), Winner Innovative award Province Gelderland (The Netherlands), Finalist Lighthouse Innovation Award (2017), Winner LaforgeHolcim Accelarator Programme 2019.
WearHealth (GER)
WearHealth help companies to improve worker safety, health and productivity by monitoring workload and correlating it with operations using wearables and AI.
Solution: Companies can save costs and increase productivity by empowering workers and augmenting occupational safety and health monitoring.
Valuation Category: Heavyweight ($2,500,000 – $10,000,000)
Awards Won: TechFounders, French Tech Ticket, Binnd 4.0, BFAUTO, AI Congress 2020.
Omniflow (PRT)
Omniflow provide sustainable smart city solutions.
Solution: Their smart lamppole, powered by wind and solar, can retrofit existing streetlight converting them into a sustainable smart pole that can house multiple added value services, like: 5G/LTE Small Cells, Computer Vision, IoT Gateways and Audio Speakers.
Valuation Category: Heavyweight ($2,500,000 – $10,000,000)
Awards Won: Altran Innovation Award, Red Herring Top 100 Winner Europe, Dubai Futurism Award, World Alliance for Efficient Solutions – Solar Impulse foundation.
Who will deliver the virtual knockout at the Global Final Battle on April 21? There is only one way to find out: reserve your ringside seat for the livestream here.