The jury of the sixth edition of the PowerUp! Challenge announced the winner of the CEE region’s most prominent contest for innovative enterprises and business solutions.
Woola from Estonia was awarded a cheque for 50 000€ as well as the opportunity to join EIT InnoEnergy’s business accelerator programme.
The prize is complemented by other valuable contributions from key partners such as Amazon Web Services, Vestbee and the SpeedUp Group.
The Challenge saw record participation this year, with over 360 start-ups from 20 countries across Central and Eastern Europe in the running for the main prize and future investment opportunities.
In the sixth edition of the competition, Woola has been awarded the “Startup of the year in the CEE region” title and a cheque for 50,000€, along with the opportunity to join the EIT InnoEnergy’s business accelerator programme. Furthermore, key partner Amazon Web Services offered credits to their AWS Activate program and business support, and other partners such as Vestbee and the SpeedUp Group also awarded the winner with services and grants.
Who is Woola
Woola is engaged in production of packaging material from sheep’s wool residues which is used in decreasing the production, consumption and landfill waste of environmentally harmful materials like Styrofoam and plastic.
Woola is an eco-friendly bubble wrap made from sheep wool.
The product is shockproof, heatproof, and at-home compostable within six months.
Woola makes use of an abundant resource that would otherwise be thrown away. Every year, 135 tons of sheep wool ends up in a landfill in Estonia alone.
Viezo, Lithuania in 2nd place
Viezo from Lithuania the runner-up of the Grand Final is active in developing new types of material that can produce energy from vibrations and use this instead of batteries.
The electricity generated from wasted vibrations can power wireless IoT sensors, therefore prolonging their lifetime or increasing the amount of signals.
They received a €10,000 prize.
Pocket Virtuality, Czechia, is 3rd
The third place and a cheque of €5,000 went to the team of Pocket Virtuality from Czech Republic who came up with a solution of augmented and virtual reality technology that specializes in real-time remote communication.
The solution may be used in the fields of engineering, medicine and smart cities.
Thanks to this technology, the on-site worker can connect with an external expert who sees a virtual representation of the environment and can fully assist from a distance.
Audience award went to Slovenia
The audience award went to TROIA from Slovenia, with their solution TROIA AR platform, which is an asset management tool.
The platform, with the help of AR glasses, tablets or phones, displays computer-generated key data in real time, thus enabling exceptional improvements in terms of operational excellence and quality at work.
It offers endless possibilities and business opportunities for all industries and the TROIA team can customize it for different applications, for different organizations.
