The three winners of this year's Munich Business Plan Competition have been announced: ParkHere, Reactive Robotics and Toposens are three Munich high-tech startups that have been recognized not only for their highly innovative ideas, but also for their talent and courage.
The 20th Munich Business Plan Competition is coming to an end. But not before the winners of this round have been chosen. Last night, the time had come at the Haus der Kunst. And with ParkHere, Reactive Robotics and Toposens Three Munich startups landed in the top three places. The winners had to compete against 76 other startups from Munich and throughout Southern Bavaria in Phase 3 of the three-stage competition. A total of 249 founding teams participated in one or more phases of the 2016 competition.
Together with the sponsoring partner LfA Development Bank Bavaria drew BayStartUP, organizer of the Munich Business Plan Competition, announced the winners.
Hans Peter Göttler, member of the board of LfA Förderbank Bayern, was impressed by the quality of the winners:
"The winners of this year's competition have highly innovative ideas, talent, and courage! With their technology-oriented business models, they are focusing on future trends. This creates further potential for growth and jobs for Bavaria as a startup location."
The positive development is no coincidence, as the managing director of BayStartUP, Dr. Carsten Rudolph, white:
"The startups that have now been honored demonstrate the special qualities of Bavaria's startup scene today: highly innovative technologies developed by young specialists and sound business models – in other words, a very high degree of professionalism among the startups. With BayStartUP and the Munich Business Plan Competition, we are further advancing this professionalization of the startup scene. For example, every single participant receives intensive jury feedback from entrepreneurship experts."
Munich Business Plan Competition 2016: These are the three winners
The first winners of the Munich Business Plan Competition is the ParkHere GmbH, a spin-off from the Technical University of Munich and developer of a parking space management system. It operates energy-autonomously by generating the electricity it consumes itself, and improves parking space utilization in cities. Ultra-thin sensors are attached to the parking spaces and register when a car enters or leaves the parking space. The elastic deformation of the sensors generates an electrical voltage. The corresponding data is then transmitted via a cellular module to a central database. From there, map manufacturers and navigation service providers can obtain the data and integrate it into their systems. Drivers can then be guided by the navigation service providers to the next available parking space.
On the second place was the Reactive Robotics GmbH from Gilching near Munich. The medical technology startup develops robots for the so-called Very Early Mobilization of patients in intensive care units. This therapy typically allows patients to leave the intensive care unit one day earlier and the hospital three days earlier. However, manual early mobilization therapy is costly, as it requires three additional nursing staff, and is not suitable for all patients.
"What's unique about our device is the ability to mobilize patients directly in their bed. Robotic modules are attached to the intensive care bed. Unlike existing solutions, this eliminates the time-consuming and dangerous transfer to a separate therapy device for the intensive care patient,"
explains founder and idea developer Alexander König. Another special feature: The robot will adapt to the patient's individual therapy needs using machine learning and adaptive control technology. Reactive Robotics GmbH has already won awards in phases 1 and 2 of the competition and has already completed a financing round with High-Tech Gründerfonds, Bayern Kapital, and strategic investors.
And - last but not least — was the Toposens GmbH, which started with a software/sensor technology, as third place winner Toposens is developing an innovative 3D sensor that can perceive its surroundings in real time using ultrasound. The team claims that this enables 3D scanning for the first time using a single ultrasound sensor. Toposens uses commercially available components, assembles them in a special layout, and combines them with the software that represents its core expertise. The field of application is broad: Toposens can detect people, for example, to anonymously count visitors in retail or smart home applications. It can also be used for collision avoidance, for example, in automated logistics systems, industrial robots, drones, and cars. It all began when co-founder Alexander Rudoy needed a 3D sensor for another project.
And what happens next?
This year marked the conclusion of the 20th season of the Munich Business Plan Competition. The initiative was launched in 1996 as the first business plan competition in Germany by McKinsey & Company and supporters from politics, business, and academia.
The Munich Business Plan Competition 2017 starts in autumn 2016. To kick things off, BayStartUP, in cooperation with WERK1 Munich, is hosting the 8th Munich Startup Demo Night on October 20, 2016, in the TonHalle on the Munich factory premises.
