This year the sTARTUp Day 2020 event in Tartu gathered hundreds or smart and young people who were telling visitors about their developments and looking for funding. Out of hundreds of applications, the organizers filtered out 33 startups that gave a few-minute-long presentation in front of the jury. Here are the experts from the RIA.com Marketplaces telling us about 10 most exciting projects.
“Estonian startups are second to none of the startups that we saw at the Web Summit in Lisbon at the end of 2019. These unique developments impact the automobile market, so healthcare and business sectors. Many startups are dedicated to making everyday lives of Estonians easier,” says a member of the Management Board of RIA.com Marketplaces Artem Umanets. “Naturally, for us, as the founder of the AUTO.RIA.com website (one of the top six in the world), the spirit of DriveX startup was particularly close to our heart. It will help car rental services to simplify checks of their cars.”
1. DriveX
DriveX – service for online inspection of cars after their return from rent. The idea of the project is easy to understand for anyone who has ever rented a car – it allows to verify the car’s condition before and after its use by the customer with the help of photographs. The technology must allow performing an online inspection of the car using an analysis of photographs. Fuel level, mileage, and various malfunctions will also be taken into account. If there is something wrong with the car, the system will automatically inform the owner or the car rental company.
According to the founder of the project Rauno Sigur, this service will interest first and foremost B2B customers, i.e. car rental services, insurance companies, etc. The mission of the project is to add transparency to the car rental industry through the digitalization of all processes.
2. Entify
Entify – service for verification of customers who are legal entities. The startup will allow automating the process of checks of potential contract partners with respect to numerous parameters. The result of the check is a detailed report with a rating score of reliability of the contract partner.
According to co-founder Julia Ront, this service allows finding information about customers and partners from any location in the world with just a few clicks. Their companies can be checked with regard to money laundering and fraud.
This startup is extremely relevant to today’s financial sector in the European Union. The European Union is introducing more and more regulations in the field of Anti Money Laundering (AML) or Know Your Customer (KYC), and automation of these processes is absolutely necessary. Any business must be ready for a situation where such regulations will be applicable not only to companies operating in the financial sector (banks, insurance companies, etc.), but also in other business sectors.
3. Wastefox
Wastefox – developer and producer of home stations for recycling of organic waste into fertilizers.
The guys behind this startup have created one of the first composters that allow to turn food waste into fertilizers. As the owner of the startup Joonatan Oras points out, it can be done “with visible speed and elegance”. Such a product is first and foremost necessary for owners of private houses because it will let them turn recycled waste into fertilizers for the garden.
The mission of the startup is to take care of the environment through recycling of organic waste at the spot without its removal. Sorting of biological waste prevents it from becoming the source of CO2 emissions. Also, the biobox will allow reducing the frequency of waste removal.
4. ISACHAMP
ISACHAMP – two projects in one. First of all, this is a financial scoring service for developing countries that is based on social activities, analysis of behavior and other metrics that are not traditional for the financial sector. Second, this service provides loans for studies. Unlike a classic bank loan, the borrower returns not body and interest, but a part of his or her future salary.
The owner of the startup Bouya Maalainine is sure that the more people earn, the better it is for our society. This is why customers pay to the startup a percentage of their income for a fixed period of time. But there is one special feature here. The customer does not pay when his or her income is low.
5. Vigo
Vigo – an online service for recovery from a stroke. The startup aims to reach an obvious and important goal – to digitalize best existing practices of rehabilitation after a stroke. It is important to remember, that other than physical damage that must be minimized in the hospital, another critical element of recovery is work on emotional damage. This online service aims to help people with that.
6. Lumebot
Lumebot – developer of industrial robots for cleaning of streets. The mission of the company is to replace big municipal machines (first and foremost tractors) with small (up to 500 kg) robots that will be able to clean streets from snow in winter and from everything else, from leaves to rubbish, during all other seasons.
The founder of the startup Kaspar Kikerpill says that today operation of a robot still requires a remote operator, however, in future this function will also be automated.
7. Grudio.io
Grudio.io – a startup in the field of power supply. The company has set a very ambitious goal – to change the traditional system of balancing of production and consumption of electric power in the network that was initially developed for the provision of power based on fossil sources of energy. The increase of the share of renewable sources of energy in the power balance leads to the need to change distribution systems. The Grudio.io team is sure that this goal can be achieved using the involvement of households and the development of a P2P network.
8. ColdPlasmaTech
ColdPlasmaTech – a German medical startup. The mission of the startup is to bring futuristic medical technologies from the Star Trek series into real life.
As the owner of the startup Carsten Mahrenholz tells us, the cold plasma technology allows doing that already today, treating wounds and deep cuts. Such a medical device is already being developed by the Coldplasmatech team together with experts from the leading European plasma technology institute (INP). It will allow treating poorly healing wounds. In future, the comprehensive cold plasma technology will be available to the general public as a bandage material.
9. Speakly
Speakly – a startup in the field of online education. The team of the startup implements a scientific approach to study of foreign languages – instead of learning words by heart it focuses on learning sentences and word constructions which are most commonly used in everyday life.
As the developers say, Speakly will help the user to learn 4000 most frequently used words in the order of their relevance. Thanks to this the level of foreign language skills will increase faster.
10. Promoty
Promoty – a marketplace for influencers and brands. This service will allow brands to maximize the efficiency of advertising campaigns in social media, and to establish order in the fast-growing influence marketing market (by reducing time and costs, author’s note).
As Marelle Ellen of Promoty says, the service will allow any company to find and establish cooperation with influential people who are fans of a brand, and to honestly recommend it to its subscribers in social media.
In conclusion, Artem Umanets of RIA.com Marketplaces said: “I would like to emphasize the highest quality of the organization of all events within the framework of sTARTUp Day 2020. From our point of view, the level was higher than the one of Web Summit”.