After a series of digital pitching sessions in front of a jury composed of entrepreneurs, investors and other start-up experts, 10 ICT and 5 space start-ups received the good news that they have been selected for participation in the 11th edition of Fit 4 Start, Luxembourg’s flagship accelerator programme. They were selected among a total of 255 applications received from start-ups in 35 countries.
The selected start-ups will benefit from the specialised coaching as well as €50,000 of funding from the Ministry of the Economy each, with the possibility of receiving an additional €100,000 if they graduate successfully from the programme and manage to raise some private capital. For this edition, the programme has been extended to cover six months instead of previously four.
The programme will also focus more strongly on participating start-ups’ market launch phase.
“Experience has taught us that four months is not really enough to cover all aspects that would help the start-ups move forward in their development,” explains Stefan Berend, Head of Start-up Acceleration at Luxinnovation. “Participants in previous editions have also indicated that they would have welcomed a longer programme in order to have time to benefit even more from the skills and experience of the coaches.” The programme will also focus more strongly on participating start-ups’ market launch phase, and notably intensify its networking activities in order to help them find relevant partners such as research centres or larger companies.
Fit 4 Start #11 will kick off in mid-June, and initially be completely digital. However, Mr Berend has hopes that this situation will evolve. “Hopefully, we will be able to move to a hybrid mode in the coming months, and if the health situation allows we might even conclude with going back to the face-to-face meetings we used to have before the pandemic.”
Selected start-ups
ICT
- AiVidens – Thanks to artificial intelligence, the solution helps companies reducing the unpaid amount by 30% and improving the operational efficiency by 20%. It predicts when customer will pay their invoices and segments the debt portfolio according to various payment patterns and risk profiles.
- Cascade Lab Sàrl – An award-winning affordable administration, compliance and governance platform aimed at financial sector SMEs that automates their activities, replaces stand-alone tools and allows users to benefit from the efficiencies of data integration.
- ChemChain – A communication and collaboration platform for companies to trace chemicals and provide recycling information. It enables them to recover their materials and products after their service life and reduces their environmental footprint.
- Divizend – Holistic and fully digital approach for the recovery of withholding tax on foreign dividends.
- Kodehyve – A B2B collaboration software helping real estate developers, agencies and funds to more efficiently plan, manage and analyse their construction and commercialisation projects. It is done through a careful selection of powerful in-house modules as well as third-party APIs.
- LetzMath Sàrl – An effective language-free pedagogical training programme for enhancing young children’s cognitive and math skills. With the support of SCRIPT (Luxembourg Ministry of Education), the Magrid solution is now available to all preschoolers in public schools in Luxembourg.
- No Big Deal – A mobile app in which users complete wellbeing challenges to achieve exclusive rewards from brands. For example, walk 20,000 steps for a free yoga class.
- The Kindness Group – Giftable makes gifting as easy as sending a text message. Through a mobile application, one can share and receive gifts that can be redeemed at selected shops.
- The Privacy Office Luxembourg S.A. – An IT solution that makes data flows transparent, so that organisations know exactly where their data are and what they need to do to effectively protect them and make the users of their digital products and services feel comfortable and safe.
- to Stories – to Stories is a content creation and publishing app for social media. It turns any link or content into a ready to be published Instagram story. Super-fast! Web pages, podcasts, text, photos, tweets – share anything to stories. The app instantly generates multiple designs to choose from.
Space
- Blackswan Technologies – Blackswan is building autonomy in space – a cornerstone for enabling the future space economy. Its current 3-product software suite is designed to address the expected ten-fold increase in space traffic by expanding the range of autonomous activities that can be performed with small satellites, reducing costs of operations and lowering collision risks.
- Clutch Space Systems Limited – Software defined ground system solutions, which are already working at several customer sites. The company uses proven software defined ground systems and novel antenna concepts to enable satellite operators to be released from the current expensive and inherently fragmented approach to command and control of their satellites into a world of seamless “always available” 24/7 connectivity.
- Mission Space – With a fleet of nanosatellites built and launched, Mission Space develops advanced forecast and monitoring system for one of the highest priority natural hazards in the world – space weather.
- Novo space, Co. – Novo Space is developing high-performance, radiation-tolerant computers to support the growing need for autonomous systems, machine learning in space and other data-intensive processing technologies. Today’s underserved market includes mainly near-Earth applications, such as broadband communications and high-resolution Earth observation.
- Plus Ultra Space Outposts SL – Plus Ultra aims to become the backbone of the lunar economy by deploying infrastructure that enables lunar development. Its first project, Harmony, is the only lunar system to provide high-speed communications (>100 Mbps) and GPS-like navigation, on-demand, anywhere on the Moon. Its lunar customers will be able to maximise their return on investment and minimise their cost and risks with Harmony services starting 2024.