Three international impact start-ups win Future Hamburg Award
The impact start-ups Breeze Technologies, Traceless and Infinite Mobility accepted Thursday (June 10, 2021) the Future Hamburg Award 2021 during a digital awards ceremony on International Innovation Day run by Plug and Play Hamburg. The award honours smart solutions for tomorrow's more sustainable cities. The startups from Norway and Germany prevailed over fledgling companies from 15 nations that had entered the contest.
Tailor-made support programme
The three winning teams will be invited to a tailor-made programme by the Startup Unit Hamburg to further develop their business models and products in the Reallabor Hamburg. They will also receive support with building a high-quality network and establishing contacts with investors. The first-placed start-up Breeze Technologies will be taking part in a four-week international accelerator programme run by Plug and Play in Silicon Valley. Denmark's Blue Atlas Robotics and Germany's Konvoi won an opportunity to develop their products in logistics and maritime technologies at the HPA test field in Hamburg after scooping bonus prizes from homePORT.
Winners of Future Hamburg Awards 2021:
1st Prize: Breeze Technologies, Germany
Founded in 2017 and based in Hamburg and Copenhagen, Breeze Technologies leads the way in terms of air quality sensors, data and analytics. Breeze's sensors provide real-time, area-wide air quality monitoring in business premises and urban environments. The Breeze Environmental Analytics Cloud collects real-time data from Breeze's own air quality sensors and enriches it with external data sources. The technology helps building managers, environmental scientists or urban administrators understand the local air quality and identify ways of improving it. The startup uses artificial intelligence-generated decision-making tools for controlling air pollution and in the hopes of reducing CO2 significantly.
2nd Prize: Traceless, Germany
The bioeconomy start-up Traceless materials has developed a holistic and environment-friendly plastic substitute. The company's highly innovative technology uses agricultural by-products to make fully compostable storage-stable films, solid materials and wafer-thin coatings. The material retains the same advantageous properties of plastics. The company hopes to help solve global plastic pollution in this way. Founded in Hamburg in 2020 by two women, the start-up secured a single-digit million investment in its first round of financing.
3rd Prize: Infinite Mobility, Norway
Founded in 2020, Norway's Infinite Mobility develops lightweight, solar-powered vehicles for urban mobility making for new solutions to short inner-city journeys. The company's solar tuk-tuk is cost-effective, safe and saves space and should help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals of poverty alleviation, climate change and sustainable cities and communities.
"The solutions to the most important problems of our time can be found in logistics, mobility and especially in connection with green hydrogen. The Future Hamburg Award contributes to the sustainable, innovative power of cities," said Michael Westhagemann, Senator for Economics. Dr. Rolf Strittmatter, Chairman of the Board of Hamburg Marketing GmbH and Managing Director of Hamburg Invest, which are among the initiators of the competition, remarked: "We offer the world's best start-ups a real laboratory for testing their business models in one of Europe's most innovative cities."
Award promotes sustainable innovations
Hamburg is one of the few European cities with its own Startup Award. The Future Hamburg Award, which is presented by the city through Hamburg Marketing GmbH and for the second time since 2019, honours sustainable innovations in mobility, logistics and hydrogen. Founders receive support testing their innovative business projects in an urban ecosystem - projects that have the potential to become best-practice models and generate an additional positive impact. The international Startup Award serves as a bridgehead between Europe, the United States and other world regions. The winners get an opportunity to promote their projects in Silicon Valley and the Hamburg Metropolitan Region and benefit from Hamburg's links to key global markets.
Focus on future topics
During the digital awards ceremony, the winning teams presented their business models to international experts as well as movers and shakers in the start-up scene, the political sphere and established companies. Hamburg is now gearing up to host the ITS World Congress 2021 for Intelligent Transport Systems in October. The Hamburg Metropolitan Region will be showcasing itself as a forward-looking, central European, green hydrogen centre with solutions along the entire value chain. As northern Europe's main commercial hub and Germany's second largest city, Hamburg is ideal for opening up new markets with forward-looking ideas.
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