South-Estonian students’ 10 best business ideas

On 13 December, the pre-selection round of South Estonia’s biggest student business ideas competition Kaleidoskoop took place at Tartu V Conference Centre. 36 teams pitched their business ideas to judges, who selected the 10 best teams that will go to the Kaleidoskoop finals at the Startup Day business festival on 24 January.

The 10 best teams are:

MediBee – online queue and web triage for Emergency Rooms;

Pick and Drive – a platform which unites driving students who seek for cheaper driving lessons and driving instructors who want to earn extra money;

Rosella Kunst – website which connects clients and artists. Clients can commission an art piece based on a photo or an idea;

Stargazing – offers the opportunity to seek for the spots with the least light pollution and cloud coverage to gaze at the stars;

The Joy of Giving – main vision is to contribute to reducing relative poverty in Estonia by building an E-commerce website where people will be able to order their lunch and get it delivered to their doorstep. Additionally, the company will send a box of meals to poor families in Estonia;

TRIT –  makes translators more visible, translation more resource-efficient and placing orders easier;

VEINC – is an innovative wine course for all wine lovers. It is based on a subscription box service that delivers 3 bottles of wine to your door every month, with all the educational information;

Vetik –helps cosmetic producers substitute the unhealthy colorants with a new red colorant, which is natural, vegan and can have skin rejuvenating properties;

ViralSAT – combines satellite images with crowdsourced images of disaster events to provide better information for critical decision-making;

VRE – a mobile app for real estate agencies to create 360 tours with just a few clicks and without any extra tech.

The Kaleidoskoop business ideas competition took place for the 11th time and 36 teams presented their business ideas. Each student team had three minutes to pitch their idea to judges who also asked questions.

“It is always good to see a lot of young people who want to change the world or help to develop fields they are passionate about,” said judge Martin Vares. “There were teams who knew what they needed to do next and there were teams who needed to figure that out, but each idea had a value. I encourage all teams to keep on working to bring their idea to life. Collect feedback and rejections and in the end, you will be successful.”

The competition was organised together with “Startup Talks” – the Artificial Intelligence conference. The judges were Aivar Pere (UT business advisor), Martin Vares (CEO of Fractory), Sven Parkel (general manager of Tartu Biotechnology Park), Giga Sesitashvili (business analyst of Go Motors), Iuliia Trabskaia (research fellow of entrepreneurship), Laura Tomson (UT foreign funds coordinator) and Marelle Ellen (marketing manager of sTARTUp Day).   

In the finals the top 10 teams will compete to win awards, for example participation in the European Innovation Academy in Portugal, tickets to the startup and technology conference Latitude59, financial awards from Tartu City Government or a 2-month access to the coworking space Startup Hub.

The Starter programme business ideas competition is funded by the European Social Fund and EIT Health.

Contact: Riin Lisett Rei, UT IdeaLab marketing and communication manager, 5908 6451, riin.lisett.rei@ut.ee