Demo Day marked the end of the first round of Techcelerator, an accelerator programme which brought 12 tech startups together from 8 different cities in Romania to compete for additional investment from GapMinder Venture Partners. This is mostly funded by the Competitiveness Operational Programme (COP), in collaboration with the European Regional Development Fund.
12 startups presented on the Demo Day stage their projects’ evolution since joining Techcelerator:
- Apiary Book allows recording on mobile phone of information on the number, health and maintenance of each bees family, treatments carried out, and other operations in the field of beekeeping;
- AppSeed helps deploy website and apps for people without programming knowledge;
- Connected Medical Devices provide an IoT solution for Alzheimer patients to improve their life and the one of their family’s;
- EngageApp is a platform for companies to identify their objectives, match them with employee interests and engage them via custom-made challenges;
- Ialoc offers an online reservation system for restaurants in Bucharest, Romania;
- Medicai uses Machine Learning to offer interpretations over the patient’s downloaded medical imaging tests, as a second medical opinion beside a human professional’s;
- MiioSmile is a mobile app for dentists to host their patients’ documents, keep them organised and private;
- Uhura Solutions helps companies to replace human interaction with customers, by an AI solution that can read and understand customer contracts and get to the complex decision-making, through completely natural interaction with customers.
- Hyper Pragma builds robotic self-structuring systems, with applications in adaptive architecture or outer space logistics and deployment of automated structures;
- Ride Safe integrates the user’s motorcycle to Internet Of Things, making their rides safer and giving them in-depth reports of their travels;
- TalentBrowse aggregates the newest talent from recruitment agencies, offering the user access to a database of only recently interviewed candidates, immediately interested in job offers.
- WireFame is an optimization platform for the photorealistic visualization industry that bridges the gap between its main actors: property developers, architects and CG artists;
Dan Mihaescu, founding partner of GapMinder Venture Partners, stated that all competing startups have grown significantly throughout Techcelerator, having the upcoming future as equally important for their evolution. Thus, the Venture Capital fund decided to invest a further 20.000 euro in 3 select startups which showed great potential in their target markets.
The jury for this year included among the founders of GapMinder Venture Partners, investors and journalists from the startup ecosystem. Alongside, the audience enjoyed keynotes from UiPath and Fitbit. The awards were given based on several criteria such as the current market impact of the projects, team performance throughout the accelerator programme, strong competitive points, the business and financial strategies.
The audience’s vote went towards EngageApp, winning 10.000 euro for the best pitch
Ride Safe will advance into the next investment round of 20.000 euro from GapMinder Venture Partners, being the Most Promising Startup at Demo Day
With branches in Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca, two important centres of romanian innovation, Techcelerator is the first accelerator in Romania to allocate funds for early-stage romanian tech startups to evolve in their target markets. The financial support is offered in exclusive partnership with Gapminder Venture Partners, the venture capital investment fund recently released in Romania. Innovative startups are targeted for it, having a great potential for company growth and international reach, from on-demand industries such as: software, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, digital transformation, IT health solutions, agriculture technology or fintech.
This year’s acceleration programme lasted for 10 weeks in Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca, with support from over 60 international mentors. Techcelerator combined intensive mentoring and coaching sessions, targeted expertise on the startup’s chosen field and marketing services with an outreach towards an international community, to offer the participants the opportunity for expansion and exposure on the global market.
A new round of startups will be accepted in the programme starting this autumn.