EIT Digital's Venture Program announces the finalist teams competing for funding worth €150,000

Al.bility, ChaosShift, Life 4.0, Notora, Parent’s Advisor, and Whiz Commerce Cloud are the six finalist teams of the pre-acceleration program Venture Program, launched by EIT Digital, part of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). The teams can benefit from two more funding rounds of 10,000 euro each and have contracted the first round of funding totaling 30,000 euro.

The six tech startups will present their ideas at the DemoDay Alpha, organized at the end of the first validation phase of the Startup Reaktor incubator, which takes place on Thursday and Friday, 22-23 June, online, from 16:00.

The second edition of the Venture Program in Romania and Bulgaria is supported by the Startup Reaktor incubation platform, in partnership with the Romanian Tech Startups Association (ROTSA) and Techcelerator.

The finalist teams benefited from an intensive seven-week program, from the 10th of May to the 22nd of June, designed to help them build their MVP, along with financial support through grants of €5,000.

The topics of the mentoring sessions were varied and multidisciplinary, necessary for the development and growth of a technology startup. These included problem testing and validation, customer development, goal setting, market research, competitor analysis, product development, lead generation, digital sales and marketing, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and impact in innovation, growing and attacking an international market, pitching and more.

The next phase of internationalisation, called Beta Launchpad, will take place in the coming period, where teams will receive support with launching and growing internationally. In the next selection phase, companies can benefit from two more rounds of funding of €10,000, in equity rounds.

Teams remain under the mentorship of EIT Digital, as well as local partners ROTSA and Techcelerator to grow their proposed products, alongside successful companies and the alumni community.

The EIT Digital Venture Program was launched in 2018 to support early-stage entrepreneurs in the Baltic States and South Eastern Europe. As of this edition, the programme is running in 22 European countries. During the first five editions, EIT Digital has supported more than 200 entrepreneurs and launched 124 startups, some of which quickly raised investment and signed contracts with customers.

“For seven weeks, ROTSA’s Startup Reaktor team had the privilege of guiding and supporting the development and transformation journey of the founders’ teams through our incubator program, designed to provide a solid platform for learning and mentoring. The teams in the programme have exceeded expectations, being highly engaged in the process of exploring key concepts, including sustainability, and have turned this knowledge into innovative ideas and plans. Collaboration with international experts in technology, sustainability and international development has brought tremendous value to the programme. We encourage the teams to maintain these connections and turn them into lasting partnerships.

Participating teams proposed solutions that facilitate access to relevant information, functional platforms that use artificial intelligence to optimize business processes and create personalized experiences. In addition, their products were dedicated to improving quality of life, addressing challenges in areas such as health, environment, education and more. The participating teams proposed products with market potential – from digital applications to platforms that function through artificial intelligence or augmented reality, mainly dedicated to identifying solutions in various areas and improving quality of life”, said Tudor Pasc, Incubation Director at ROTSA.

The 6 finalist teams are:

Al.bility

Al.bility helps professional tennis players and coaches analyze and improve their performance. The product uses an IMU sensor attached to the racquet, an on-court video camera, and machine learning algorithms to analyze data and provide players and coaches with relevant information about on-court performance.

ChaosShift

ChaosShift is a cloud management platform that supports digitization within design and construction companies. The product enables efficient internal and external communication, history tracking, adding comments, archiving, scheduling, budget planning, cost estimating, task and team management, and general and program management.

Life 4.0

Life 4.0 is a healthy lifestyle platform that supports personal and corporate wellness. The app includes activities in 4 focus areas (Sport, Nutrition, Mental-Emotional Health and Financial Health) and collects relevant data. The platform includes, in a fully digitised way, personal wellbeing and employee engagement programmes.

Notora

Notora is a collaborative platform dedicated to marketing teams and creators. It is the only automated platform in Romania where brands can collaborate with creators to get photo and video content for marketing campaigns.

Parent’s Advisor

Parent’s Advisor is an AI assistant for parents who want to raise talented and happy children. Within the app, parents can take a free vocational guidance test for their children and will receive personalized recommendations on the type of extracurricular activities suitable for their children.

Whiz Commerce Cloud

Whiz Commerce Cloud is an advanced SaaS platform dedicated to e-commerce businesses that want to create no-code mobile apps. The platform provides a fast, easy-to-use and cost-effective solution for businesses of all sizes to develop mobile commerce apps tailored to their needs.

“I congratulate the finalist teams of the Venture Program stage, built together with our partner EIT Digital. This programme is running simultaneously in 22 countries across Europe and this year a total of 525 applications were recorded. This is an achievement for Romania and Bulgaria, the countries we coordinate. The six teams will continue the process of developing their businesses in Startup Reaktor, organised by ROTSA, and we will now focus on the internationalisation area. We want to support them to start testing in a new market as soon as possible, in order to receive an even stronger validation of the products’ potential”, said Cristina Țoncu, ROTSA Regional Director and Techcelerator co-founder.

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