22/11/2017, Budapest, PowerUp! Grand Final
The Grand Final of the PowerUp! 2017 Competition was successfully completed in November 2017 in Budapest, Hungary.
HeatVentors from Hungary is the winner of this year’s edition of the international PowerUp! Competition for innovative energy start-ups. This company is developing a solution which offers an innovative thermal energy storage with phase change materials which can save 90% space and 20-40% energy with 0,5-2 years return on investment. The technology has a variety of applications for thermal energy storage: from deep freezing technologies to comfort cooling and heating, renewable energy sources, industrial technologies and concentrated solar thermal power plants.
HeatVentors was awarded € 20.000 and a chance to be invited to the prestigious InnoEnergy Highway® accelerator. The runner-up title and € 10.000 prize was awarded to FLASC from Malta which is an energy storage device that integrates into a floating offshore platform. Third place and € 5.000 went to VIA ALTA from Czech Republic, which is a technology for the production of biofuel from biodegradable waste.
During the Grand Final in Budapest, 12 start-ups presented their solutions before the jury, investors and media. These were the winners of regional finals which took place in Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Greece. The finalists were selected from 158 teams from 24 countries of Central Europe who entered the competition. The stakes were high as the Highway® accelerator is one of the best programmes in cleantech sector in Europe:
“We help actively – we verify the business model, check if the company needs a salesman. We try not to interfere but to show solutions and open doors – we give access to our business and academic partners all over Europe. And this is the main goal of PowerUp! competition” - says Jakub Miler, CEO InnoEnergy Central Europe, the organizer of the competition.
Participation in Highway® was granted to Mebius, the winner of Wild Card, special award from a Global Partner, MOL Group.
Jury included also: György Bacsa, SVP Group Strategy and Business Development, MOL Group; Viktor Miškovský, Investment Director, Inven Capital; Matias Torrellas, Portfolio Manager, InnoEnergy, Łukasz Świercz, Business Creation Officer, InnoEnergy Central Europe, who was the chairman of the Jury, and Agnieszka Wasilewska-Semail, CEO, Rafako S.A.
The audience had a chance to listen to Jonas Kjellberg, one of the co-creators of Skype and venture capital investor.
What makes PowerUp! stand out from other competitions for start-ups is Bootcamp: before the Grand Final, the participants spent two days on verifying their business models and taking their presentation skills to another level. The coaches and mentors included expert business trainers from Central Europe, e.g. Gleb Maltsev, Estonia, Rafał Szczepanik, Poland and Jan Kubalik from Czech Republic.
You can find out more at: http://powerup.innoenergy.com/
