A green idea won the Kaleidoskoop competition

On 17 March, the finals of one of the largest pitching competitions for youth, Kaleidoskoop, were held for the 19th time. The six teams selected in the preliminary rounds and the DeltaX competition competed at the Startup Day business festival.

The panel of judges comprised Raimond Tamm, Deputy Mayor of Tartu; Henri Hanson, Senior Project Manager at Tartu Science Park; and Martin Vares, co-founder and CEO at Fractory. The judges assessed how the teams developed their idea, whether a problem existed, and its suitability for the market.

Image

On the photo from the left Raimond Tamm, Henri Hanson ja Martin Vares. Photo: Andres Vaher

The teams who made it to the finals were

• Biogas Collective, who develops a device that generates energy from organic waste;
• Join-Up, whose app helps people meet new people with similar interests;
• Grable, whose app helps restaurants automate order and payment operations;
• Baffi, whose app makes it possible to use a fast, safe and trustworthy childcare service;
• LIFT Talendiagentuur, who helps aspiring dancers reach their highest career potential;
• Transful, whose language learning platform helps learners find associations between a foreign word and its native language counterpart.

The top three teams won prizes. The 1000-euro prize from the entrepreneurship studies programme Edu ja tegu went to theStartertartu team Biogas Collective. The team Join-Up won a monetary prize from the Tartu City Government. Also, team Grable earned recognition.

Image

The teams who made it to the finals. Photo: Andres Vaher

According to members of team Biogas Collective, Harald Oja and Kaia Solnik, their emotions are high, “We finally got the victory! After our pitch, we already received an invitation to Berlin, so we will continue developing our idea and building the prototype.” A member of the team Join-Up, Réane Delaunoy, said that the Starter programme offered an unexpected opportunity to learn how to develop and present your idea. “The next step after this win is implementing a pilot project,” he said.

Deputy Mayor Raimond Tamm said that all teams were outstanding. “There was a wide range of ideas concerning important issues of society and real-life problems. All ideas are worth making an effort and developing further,” he said.

The Kaleidoskoop finals marked the end of the 2022 autumn season of Startup Lab’s business ideas development programme Startertartu. The 2023 spring programme has already started; its best teams can be seen at the Latitude59 conference in May.

Kaleidoskoop is funded by the European Social Fund.