Five Munich startups were honored in the Digital Innovations Founders' Competition at IFA. Four of the six main prizes went to Munich.
The Munich startups Orbem, RoVi Robot Vision, Twaice and WunderX were each awarded a main prize worth €32,000. Andreas Goerdeler, Head of the National and European Digital Agenda Division at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, awarded the other main prizes at the IFA to the startup Sopher from Berlin and Xelera Technologies from Darmstadt. The special "Smart Living" prize also goes to Munich: ChargeX is developing a technology that is designed to significantly reduce the installation effort for charging stations for electric vehicles. The startup was recently awarded Munich Business Plan Competition by BayStartUP honored.
Diverse Munich winners at the start-up competition
Orbem is working on an imaging technology based on magnetic resonance imaging and artificial intelligence that will sort out and destroy eggs containing male embryos. This will prevent male chicks from being killed for being unsuitable for egg production.
The RoVi founding team wants to use a sensor system consisting of inexpensive cameras to enable the use of robots in areas where this was previously not economical.
Twaice is working on software that analyzes lithium-ion batteries in real time and extends their lifespan.
WunderX retrofits old industrial machines and integrates them into modern cloud systems. This allows the machine's communication to be read out, analyzed, and further processed in the cloud without delay.
"Agile startups with groundbreaking ideas are crucial for Germany's international competitiveness. The startup competition demonstrates this round after round: The founding teams solve pressing challenges with technologies outside their industry, drive the networking of society, and thus help shape the future,"
explained Dr. Ulrich Nussbaum, State Secretary at the BMWi.
"That's why the BMWi supports creative minds on their path to self-employment with its twice-yearly start-up competition: with additional start-up capital for company founding, individual coaching, and mentoring. In this way, we help ensure that innovative ideas become products and business models 'Made in Germany'."
