On July 4th, 2016, CEO in SPCleantech, Janusz Kahl participated in a panel of experts in regional semi-finals of KICoff Competition 2016 in Kraków. KICoff Competition is the business idea aimed at promoting the entrepreneurship among young people and picking the best projects to accelerate the European sustainable energy market development.
7 groundbreaking startups from the field of sustainable energy have already faced jury of the regional semi-finals of the KICkoff Competition 2016 in Krakow. Energy market experts, entrepreneurs and business angels rated BIN-e and Lerta to be the best ideas at this regional stage. Both teams have qualified for the Grand Final in Warsaw, where on 20 September they will perform their final pitch and fight for €10 000, professional mentoring and a chance to get into KIC InnoEnergy Highway® accelerating programme with the financial support of up to €150 000.
BIN-e offers a solution for waste management in smart buildings. Their intelligent waste bin automatically recognizes, sorts, compresses and informs a user about the level of its filling. Their proud competitors, Lerta, is a cloud-based, modern energy intelligence software which helps utilities understand their customers’ usage, automates processes, rolls out DSR programmes and controls distributed generation. In a couple of weeks they will join 12 finalists from other CEE regions at the Final’s Boot Camp to master their public speaking and pitching skills, getting ready to introduce their ideas to the world.
KICkoff Competition – what is it all about?
KICkoff Competition is the business idea aimed at promoting the entrepreneurship among young people and picking the best projects to accelerate the European sustainable energy market development. The first stage of the competition is right behind us – over 100 applicants will take part in the workshops and the best of them will pitch in front of the start-up and energy market experts in seven countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania and Poland. Join one of the four remaining events for free and support them! KIC InnoEnergy together with local partners invites everyone, start-upers, business and energy experts, enthusiasts, communities, students, journalists, mentors and investors, who is interested in sustainable energy, start-ups and business development.