Top 5 Nordic Startups According to Nordic Startup Awards

    Nordic Startup Awards, an award given to the best and brightest startups in the Nordic region announced its finalists 2017. 5 winners from each country will go head to head to determine who will be the overall champion in a Grand Finale .

    National finals in all 5 Nordic countries takes place in September. Finnish finals will be hosted by ArcticStartup and Haaga-Helia Startup School in Microsoft Flux on September 7. The Grand Finale will take place in Stockholm in October.

    Let’s take a look at the top 5 startups that made it to the finals.

    Iceland

    Activity Stream – AI company that makes your organization better and more efficient by turning underutilized business data into actionable intelligence and insights.

    Aldin Dynamics – a virtual reality software company that has worked exclusively on VR technologies and content since early 2013. The company’s mission is to help create more powerful and engaging experiences through its flagship product Ghostline — a groundbreaking VR analytics suite to improve the user experience & accelerate production.

    CrankWheel – the company improves communication between sales teams and their prospects, in particular for software sales teams. This includes reliable, instant no-download screen sharing, conversational lead capture for web-to-lead, web-to-call and web-to-screenshare, simple-to-use web conferencing and more. Founded by a 10-year veteran of Google and an old school salesperson to give people a platform to do inside sales properly.

    Memento Payments – the company became the first mobile money wallet provider of an Icelandic bank – Islandsbanki. Memento develops an IP and knowledge of money sharing, events platforms, social networks and customers’ behaviour in mobile payments. Company’s main goal is to bridge banks to social networks and to help banks create and maintain a deep relationship with their consumer and acquire new ones.

    Takumi – micro-influencer platform that makes it easy for brands and agencies to work effortlessly with large numbers of micro-influencers on social media campaigns. Company’s growth strategy is to build scale & trust as quickly as possible, leveraging our advantaged starting position and unique approach, to become the dominant global influencer platform.

    Norway

    AbleOn Medical – develops the only aid that safely assist elders and people with disabilities through the entire shower routine. A modular system that will enable people to be safe and independent at home, relieve healthcare workers from heavy workload and drastically lower expenses in the healthcare sector. 

    Blueye Robotics – is the maker of premium ocean drones with superb stability and video quality. Established in Trondheim in summer 2015 by CEO Erik Dyrkoren, the company is based on the idea to make the ocean available to everyone.

    Ducky – the company has a goal to assist large businesses and government organisations to reach global climate goals by promoting a sustainable lifestyle among individual consumers. For leaders in medium to large corporations who struggle to engage employees in their Corporate Social Responsibility efforts, and want to create an inner engagement and ownership of strategy, workplace and results, Ducky delivers an on-line engagement platform, consultancy and communication products.

    Huddly – intelligent video communication platform. The company has secured a total of $20 million in investment, has successfuly finished its prelaunch programme by selling a few hundreds of prototype cameras to 150 enterprises around the world, and became a camera vendor for the InfinityBoard – the all-in-one team collaboration solution by the NEC Display Solutions, the Japanese technology giant. 

    No Isolation – the company founded in October 2015 with a single purpose: to help people out of loneliness. The founders started working with children suffering from long-term illness and built AV1, a telepresence robot which allows kids to attend their normal life – despite their illness. AV1 was launched (soft) in Norway in September 2016. Now, the company has scaled sales out of Norway, establishing a presence in SE, DK and NL. No Isolation is continuing the development of AV1, whilst looking into solutions for the elderly.

    Denmark

    Be My Eyes – the company founded Hans Jørgen Wiberg, who is visually impaired himself. Through his work at “The Danish Association of the Blind” he recognized, that visually impaired often need help to cope with everyday tasks and he believed technology could help. Today Be My Eyes has the largest global online community for blind and visually impaired. It is used in more than 150 countries by more than 33,500 blind and visually impaired people who are being assisted by more than 490,000 volunteers in 90 different languages.

    Lunar Way – a fintech company focusing on rethinking the banking experience for the millennial generation. The overall ambition is to change the way we bank. The company uses an existing financial infrastructure to create a completely new banking app that helps people realize their tiniest of dreams and biggest of aspirations – making their money matter more. 

    Mobile Industrial Robots – a leading manufacturer of collaborative mobile robots. The first construction idea for the MiR robot was made of LEGO bricks start 2011. The ”Alfa-version” was developed by the founder and co-owner Niels Jul Jacobsen in April 2012 and Mobile Industrial Robots was established in May 2013 and commercial-wise the company started in October 2014. To date the company has installed 300+ robots in the manufacturing industry and healthcare sector in more than 30 countries and we have established partners all over the world.

    Neurescue –  is developing a new class of medical devices for the treatment of cardiac arrest and hemorrhage. Neuresce builds a computer-controlled balloon catheter that through a small needle puncture redirects the blood flow to the heart and the brain, the organs that need it the most in critical situations. 

    Too Good to Go – a smartphone application which helps restaurants and food businesses sell their surplus food instead of wasting it. Too Good To Go was started in Copenhagen, September 2015 by a group of friends and is now available in 7 countries with over 1 million meals saved from the bin.

    Sweden

    Kitchen Time – one of the leading ecommerce companies within homeware in the Nordics. 

    MinDoktor – Sweden’s first and largest digital health care provider with the majority of the end consumer and health insurance market. Patients can interact 24/7 with a doctor/physician via their favorite device through an asynchronous chat service. The Min Doktor model offers huge savings for the society, while meeting the increasing needs of healthcare.

    Sensative – innovative startup within the IoT business. Sensative started as a spin-off from an open innovation contest in Lund, with one of Europes largest window & door manufacturer Inwido. The idea later developed into an IoT sensor, targeted to replace the traditional window & door sensor, that lets the consumers know if they have left a window or door open, the uniqueness with our idea is that the sensor can be mounted invisibly in almost any door or window. Sensative has been self-funded through customer finance, crowdfunding, bank-loans and grants.

    Soundtrack Your Brand – a Spotify-backed company founded in 2013 on a mission to kill bad background music. Headquartered in downtown Stockholm, the company is building the world’s best music streaming service for businesses. Soundtrack Your Brand provides businesses with a state-of the-art music platform and a scientifically proven content curation model, crafted by connoisseurs and perfected with technology. 

    Watty – tackles the problem of climate change at home and gives people the insights so they could make better decisions at home. Watty provides a solution for households to be able to monitor, track and understand their data usage. Watty’s solutions empower utility and energy companies to provide better services for consumers.

    Finland

    Armada Interactive – Helsinki-based mobile gaming company focused on crafting innovative, competitive and deep experiences with genre-pushing audiovisual fidelity.

    Next Games – a publicly listed mobile game developer and publisher specializing in games based on entertainment franchises, such as movies, TV series or books. Their game The Walking Dead: No Man’s Land, based on the popular AMC TV series, has been downloaded over 16 million times. Next Games employs over 80 people and is based in Helsinki, Finland.

    Oūra Ring – the world’s first wellness ring and app. ŌURA shows how your body responds to your lifestyle. By analyzing your sleep quality, activity levels, daily rhythms and the physiological responses of your body, it helps you to improve recovery from daily mental and physical load. In 2015 ŌURA raised over 650 000 on Kickstarter  one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns in Finland.

    ResQ Club – Finnish food rescuing company founded in 2015. Within only 2 years the service has got over 150,000 registered users and more than 250,000 portions have already been “ResQ’d”.

    Vainu.io – data-driven sales prospecting platform for B2B sales professionals. Over the past three years, Vainu has grown from three guys and an idea in Finland to 100 people in five countries, more than 1000 customers, thousands of users, and 100 million tracked companies in its big data-powered database.

    Now is the time to give your vote and determine who will bring home the Startup of the Year title. Public Voting is open. Go ahead and vote for your favourite startup here.