Iceberg announces a new partnership to support innovation, with Orange and the Brașov Metropolitan Agency

Iceberg, leader of the innovation consultancy market, announces a new partnership with Orange and the Brașov Metropolitan Agency, to bring Orange Fab, a start-up support programme focused on the regionally relevant sectors of tourism, industry 4.0, mobility and cybersecurity, closer to innovators in Brașov.

Iceberg and the Brașov Metropolitan Agency are the founding members of the FIT Digital Innovation Hub, focusing on accelerating the digital transformation of the mail economic sectors in the Central Region of Romania, according to European policies and the Digital Europe Programme. The partnership with Orange puts important resources at the disposal of developers, to help them launch innovative products that support digital transformation and improve living standards.

Ionuț Țața, CEO Iceberg, argues that „including Brașov in the Orange business and innovation ecosystem is an important step in preparing the region for the next digital development phase and to become competitive on an international scale”. He continued „the economic specificity of Brașov provides the opportunity to develop here a hub for innovators and start-ups which can create technology based products and services for the tourism, manufacturing of transportation industries. Therefore, traditional sectors such as the industry, tourism or IT&C can become interconnected through the effort and expertise we bring together in Brașov with our partners.”

„We aim to make Brașov a competitive city when it comes to innovation, development and digitalization, so we support initiatives and partnerships which encourages us to believe that Brașov can be a leader in cross-sectorial smart specialization in areas such as tourism, winter sports, mechatronics, automotive, mobility. Brașov started becoming a highly specialized city, determined to make the best out of all competitive advantages, to achieve economic convergence and to upgrade the way of living in the community” added Brașov’s deputy mayor, Flavia Boghiu.

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„Through Orange Fab and the Brașov local partners, we provide entrepreneurs access to the newest networks and communication technologies, development equipment and platforms, as well as mentorship and open attitude to pilot-projects. We think Brașov is an important development node for the region and we wish to contribute to developing the local ecosystem in the long run. By encouraging open data policies, we firmly believe we will generate at least four viable projects, with an impact in the targeted verticals in the next year” declared Cristian Pațachia, Orange Romania Development & Innovation Manager.

In a first initiative of the partnership, Orange supported by the Brașov Autonomous Transportation Company has installed the Business Wi-Fi Mobile solution on 11 busses going from Brașov to Poiana Brașov. Six of these busses also have Smoggie-PM air quality sensors developed by the Romanian start-up uRADMonitor, which was part of the Orange Fab programme. These services offer high speed Wi-Fi access and real time information on the quality of the environment to all inhabitants and tourists in the region and, in the same time, open opportunities for the development of new services for the local start-ups interested to access open data through APIs.

Last year, the Brașov Metropolitan Agency launched the Tourism Innovation Hub (HIT Brașov), which is still implementing an accelerating programme focusing on tourism 4.0, powered by the Agency’s, Orange’s and Iceberg’s resources. The start-ups in this programme can already access the infrastructure installed by Orange.

„The Brașov Metropolitan Agency aims to set up a data center in a room in CATTIA, to support innovation, experimental development and applicative testing activities for sectors such as 5G, cybersecurity, IoT, smart city, mobility, fintech, smart retail, health and lifestyle, digital education, future of work and more” says Dragoș David, general director of Brașov Metropolitan Agency.