Tech for Impact Awards recognizes impact-driven startups across Europe that leverage technology to develop solutions that address today’s pressing global challenges to help accelerate reaching the net-zero emission in various industries or enable social inclusion, among others. The current edition, which was organized for the first time by Bluelion, received 140 applications out of which ten most outstanding were invited to present to the audience. The presented technologies include sensors to monitor infrastructure, blockchain technology to facilitate transparency in delivering humanitarian aid, energy management, sustainable materials, edible scaffolds, and carbon reduction across various industries.
The event culminated with the awarding of four most outstanding solutions in three categories, with each receiving CHF 10’000, sponsored by the event's partners and organizer.
Aidonic, a decentralized platform designed to facilitate and enhance the delivery of humanitarian aid, impressed the jury and audience with its solution, winning two prizes. The Award for Scalable Solution sponsored by Bluelion Incubator and the Audience award. The company leverages blockchain technology to provide transparency, traceability, and efficiency in the aid distribution process, allowing donors to track their contributions and ensuring that aid reaches those in need effectively. Currently, the company has reached mover 37’000 families and is used by major global humanitarian organizations. The startup is currently raising a seed funding round to scale and reach over 100K families.
The Award for Social Innovation sponsored by UBS went to Unbound Potential, which is transforming energy storage with a novel redox flow battery(RFB) technology that offers sustainable and scalable solutions for integrating renewables. Their technology not only reduces capital and operational costs while enhancing efficiency, it creates a flexible and environmentally friendly solution to stabilize the grid as renewable energy adoption grows. Founded only 20 months ago, the company has already secured CHF8 million in grants and has garnered interest from leading organizations such as Amazon to test the solution.
Up Catalyst from Tallinn, Estonia won the Award for Future Impact Trend sponsored by Julius Baer. The company offers an innovative solution for reducing CO₂ emissions by transforming industrial waste into valuable carbon materials. It anchovies this by converting greenhouse gas into graphite and carbon nanomaterials, essential raw materials for electric vehicle (EV) batteries and various other applications.
Finalists in the competition are: Yuon Control AG, KUORI, Companion.energy, CompPair Technologies Ltd., Verretex, irmos technologies AG and sallea.(RAN)