The three-day community-organized festival sTARTUp Day 2022 has come to an end last week and finally, we can know about the winners of sTARTUp Pitching 2022 which was a record year for them since they received 380 applications from 47 countries. It’s organized by the city of Tartu, the University of Tartu, Tartu Science Park, Contriber, Tartu Biotechnology Park, Tartu Business Advisory Services, Tartu Centre for Creative Industries, and Swedbank and supported by the European Regional Development Fund.
The applications were open between October 1st, 2021 – July 1st, 2022. After a few eliminations, the big day has come. Startups with a strong mission and a scalable business model made an appearance on stage right in front of over 3500 people, including potential investors, clients, partners, and international media. All awards planned to be given now found their chosen ones.
The Winners of sTARTUp Day 2022
The Estonian Business Angels Network (EstBAN) selected their syndicated investments to go to Estonian deep tech startups LightCode Photonics and Nanordica Medical.
“In the TOP40 there were companies from GreenTech, FoodTech, DeepTech, MedTech, and other interesting fields. EstBAN syndicate lead investors decided to choose two deep tech companies founded and led by women. This hopefully shows the trend and the future of venture capital – more and more patient money goes into companies that are science-based and diverse,” commented Anu Oks, Managing Director of EstBAN.
LightCode Photonics develops a breakthrough technology for mobility which enables them to empower the existing sensors with software-defined capability and provide Lidar performance using accessible COTS components at an affordable cost. They are rethinking image acquisition and transforming 3D imaging from human-like perception to robotic vision – they are building the world’s first Software-Defined 3D Camera (SD3D Camera).
Nanordica Medical OÜ is a spin-off of the National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics (Estonia). Their technology is a mixture of antibacterial nanoparticles that was developed as a result of over 10 years of research. Their first product is antibacterial wound dressing for infected chronic wounds.
EstBAN had initially planned a syndicate investment of up to €200k in one company, but seeing the high-quality level of participating startups, decided to give out two instead. While LightCode was receiving €200K, Nanordica Medical was awarded an EstBAN-led syndicate of €150K.
“There were some amazing examples of impactful technological advancements and we decided to go forward with the two companies that stood out the most,” explained lead investor Heidi Kakko. “We’re excited to see how we can support the growth of these two companies and look forward to what the future holds,” added the lead investor Martin Goroško.
The €100k syndicate investment from Estonia-based .Cocoon Ventures went to the Hong Konger medtech startup Longenesis.
“Their team is well-aligned with the values of .Cocoon Ventures, such as willingness to learn, growth mindset and diligence. Additionally, they are just in the right phase where we can contribute most to their future growth,” said Aleksander Tõnnisson, the Founding Partner of .Cocoon Ventures.
Longenesis works towards providing a technological bridge between healthcare institutions and the biotech industry with an aim to help identify and unlock the hidden value of biomedical data to accelerate novel drug and treatment discovery and provide better help to those in need.
Besides these three, there were many other awards in the competition. äio Tech, which designs microbes for sustainable production of healthy food and feed ingredients received €10k equity-free cash from Swedbank. Rexplorer, a platform for exploration, planning, generation and monitoring of renewable energy, was awarded €20,000 data center services from Greenergy Data Centers. €3000 equity-free cash and mentoring from Head of Tele2 Estonia, Chris Robbins went to Bloomcoding which aims to build the No.1 online coding school engaging children through VR and AR game development in Europe.
LightCode Photonics, Nanordica Medical, and äio Tech will be also getting €7,5K legal support from Sorainen. €5K legal mentoring from TGS Baltic found its way to Better Medicine which develops medical imaging AI and software tools to help radiologists fight cancer. Ringo, eliminating disposable packaging and providing reusable packages as a service, got Tera Ventures mentoring package while Menken Trials, developing a web app to help pharmas reduce costs with online access to clinical drug trial documentation, will have access to S2B workspace for 3 months.
Acorai, Activate Health and Exponaut won Amazon Web Services credits from Cloudvisor ($5000 for each). Acorai is developing a medical tool for non-invasive heart failure monitoring to improve the standard of care for heart failure patients. Activate Health is re-inventing metabolic health with evidence-based digital therapies that scale like software. Exponaut is developing a platform with communication automatization features to pool the resources of businesses for growth.
Congratulations to all the winners! And don’t forget – the application period to sTARTUp Pitching 2023 starts already in October!
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