EIT Manufacturing East and the Vienna Business Agency invite eight CEE-Start-ups to Vienna

EIT Manufacturing East and the Vienna Business Agency invite eight CEE-Start-ups to Vienna

Vienna, 6th December 2021. From 3rd – 16th November, eight Industry 4.0 start-ups from six Eastern European countries had the chance to explore the start-up and manufacturing ecosystem in Vienna as part of the programme “Discover Vienna: Manufacturing Edition”. The programme, organized by the EIT Manufacturing Co-Location Center (CLC) East in cooperation with the Vienna Business Agency, comprised a variety of sessions and trainings with industry partners and investors, the participation in start-up events as well as individual coaching sessions with experts from EIT Manufacturing and the Vienna Business Agency.

In September, the Vienna-based CLC East of EIT Manufacturing, an innovation community supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union, and one of its network partners, the Vienna Business Agency, initiated the programme “Discover Vienna: Manufacturing Edition”. Start-ups and scale-ups from eleven Eastern European countries were eligible to apply for the participation in a two-weeks intensive programme in Vienna. Together with the Vienna Business Agency, the team of EIT Manufacturing East organized more than 20 agenda items, among others, trainings, meetings with partners from industry and academia, meetings with start-ups, investors, or public funding authorities. The participation at the aws Connect x Hardware event and a get together with the Austrian representations of the start-ups’ home countries was also part of their busy schedule.

Out of many high-quality applications, the jury nominated the best eight start-ups to join the two-weeks intensive programme in Vienna. The costs for traveling and accommodation were covered by the organizers. In addition, EIT Manufacturing CLC East provided the participants with free office space in their offices at the Technology Center Seestadt.

“With this programme, we want to facilitate the access to the Austrian market for industry 4.0 start-ups coming from the CEE-region and at the same time to bring new technologies to the manufacturing sector in Austria.”, says Jasmina Popovska, Senior Business Creation Manager at EIT Manufacturing CLC East, who organized and coordinated the first edition of Discover Vienna: Manufacturing Edition. “The start-ups have become an integral part of our EIT Manufacturing pan-European ecosystem and will receive business development and investment readiness support in the coming months.”, she elaborates further.

“The consolidation and further development of Vienna as a hub for Smart Production and Industry 4.0 is a crucial objective of Vienna’s economic strategy 2030. With launching the program ‘Discover Vienna: Manufacturing Edition’ in cooperation with EIT Manufacturing CLC East, we set concrete activities to support this aim. Together, we were able to offer an exclusive two-weeks program with a tremendous added value to manufacturing start-ups. The selected start-ups were given unique insights in the Austrian market by visiting Viennese production facilities, research centres, investors and ecosystem players.”, says Gabriele Tatzberger, Startup Services, Vienna Business Agency.

[Photo credit: David Bohmann] Janko Pavlovic, CEO, Digital Worx; Lubos Brzobohaty, CEO and Co-founder, Sanezoo; Gerhard Hirczi, Managing Director, Vienna Business Agency; Nemanja Subotic, CEO, SmartFireBlock Ltd.; Jasmina Popovska, Senior Business Creation Manager, EIT Manufacturing CLC East; Vyacheslav Yurkin, Co-Founder, Dynamic Division; Johannes Hunschofsky, Managing Director, EIT Manufacturing CLC East; Filip Novoselnik, CEO, Protostar Labs; Aldin Ćebo, CEO, Protostar Labs; Jela Abasova, Data Scientist, Predictive DataScience s.r.o.; Csaba Szeredy, CEO and Co-founder, ViveLab Ergo; Svetoslav Vasilev, CEO, Siviko OOD

Many corporate partners as supporters of Discover Vienna: Manufacturing Edition

A number of renowned and well-known organisations were involved to support the start-up programme in Vienna with specialised presentations, workshops or consulting sessions: TU Wien and the Pilotfabrik Industrie 4.0 of TU Wien, Incus, Atos, d4pro, Infineon, the Austrian Business Agency (ABA), voestalpine High Performance Metals, Kapsch BusinessCom, Round2Capital, Borealis, Austria Wirtschaftsservice aws and the Austrian Research Promotion Agency FFG.

“EIT Manufacturing does a very good job in connecting start-ups and bigger corporates to enhance businesses for all parties. I recognized a clear target and a very well aligned programme management throughout all meetings, and I am looking forward to working together on building the manufacturing industry.”, says DI (FH) Roland Ambrosch, MSc., Head of Digital Factory, Kapsch BusinessCom about the Discover Vienna: Manufacturing Edition programme.

Individual sessions with the start-ups as well as a tailored B2B-Sales training were held by EIT Manufacturing and the Vienna Business Agency. In addition to the on-site programme, the selected start-ups receive two months of mentoring and coaching from the Business Creation team of EIT Manufacturing.

The participants of the first Discover Vienna: Manufacturing Edition were very satisfied with the provided support. Svetoslav Vasilev, CEO of Siviko clearly recommends the programme to other start-ups: “Discover Vienna is one of those rare opportunities that someone is really interested in helping you develop your business. The two-weeks program is an excellent opportunity to grow your business outside of your home market by finding customers, partners or investors, not just from Austria, but across the region.” Lubos Brzobohaty, CEO & Co-Founder of SANEZOO was able to get first leads in order to grow his business: “I am very grateful for the connections with Austrian corporations. Some of these contacts generated new opportunities for our surface inspection products right away. EIT manufacturing was very helpful and gave us a full load of valuable feedback.”

Vyacheslav Yurkin, Co-Founder, Dynamic Division; Lubos Brzobohaty, CEO and Co-founder, Sanezoo; Svetoslav Vasilev, CEO, Siviko OOD; Aldin Ćebo, CEO, Protostar Labs; Jasmina Popovska, Senior Business Creation Manager, EIT Manufacturing CLC East; Filip Novoselnik, CEO, Protostar Labs; Bronislava Chmelova, Embassy of the Slovak Republic in Vienna; Itana Pavicevic, Embassy of the Serbian Republic in Vienna; Jela Abasova, Data Scientist, Predictive DataScience s.r.o.; Johannes Hunschofsky, Managing Director, EIT Manufacturing CLC East; Csaba Szeredy, CEO and Co-founder, ViveLab Ergo; Andrea Selendic, Embassy of the Republic of Croatia in Vienna; Janko Pavlovic, CEO, Digital Worx

The eight CEE-start-ups – an overview

Bulgaria
Siviko enables the industry to be more productive and efficient through industrial engineering and software solutions, such as the integration of industrial robots and Ignition SCADA, MES and IIoT.

Croatia
Protostar Labs with its Protostar Platform provides an end-to-end solution for AI-driven industrial automation, AI-powered quality inspection, detecting any anomalies that may occur on the product and sending signals to the main control of the production line. As an addition to visual inspection, foreign bodies in raw materials can be detected with the solution, LOT numbers/labels can be read and recognized, and predictive maintenance can be performed.

Dynamic Division enables huge area operators (manufacturers/warehouses) to cut their floor cleaning expenses with its autonomous industrial floor cleaning robots.

Czech Republic
SANEZOO sells unique inspection and robot guidance products that transform tedious manual work into reliable, fully automated solutions. They use special lighting and software for advanced analysis and exploit various methods of AI on all stages of the processing pipeline.

Hungary
ViveLab Ergo is a cloud-based simulation software solution that is providing fast and accurate 3D virtual ergonomic tests, analyses, and planning while highlighting the time-consuming and the health-damaging effects of forced movements caused by incorrect workplace design. It helps to create the right working conditions and processes for the people who work in occupational safety and engineering fields.

Serbia
Digital worx supports the synchronization of workers and machines on the shop floor. It is used for performance management and energy monitoring.

SmartFireBlock Ltd is driven by the business philosophy to provide value with novel technology products and eco-technological solutions. Their goal is to establish leading industrial production of novel Passive Fire Protection products.

Slovakia
The Predictive Data Science artificial intelligence platform solves anomaly prediction for cars, machines, robots, devices and tools.