A total of 70,000 euros was distributed in the 2020 spring round of Prototron


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This year’s first round of Prototron, Estonia’s first smart ideas fund, is over. A total of 70,000 euros was shared between five teams in the spring round. Ideas like a new generation alarm button, automated road surface marking robot and solar park analytics solution were judged worthy of funding.

According to Jana Budkovskaja, CEO of Prototron, innovation is an important keyword in the ideas that received funding in this round. “This is precisely in the point that people are often so used to existing solutions and as if in a comfort zone that they don’t know what better to want. In most cases, however, innovation will most likely be better, faster or more efficient, and if we don’t think about it before, we definitely will after personal contact or need, ” she explained, adding that with Prototron ‘s support, the teams are now starting to develop solutions that break many existing patterns of action.

The beneficiaries of Prototron’s 2020 spring round funding are:

– The 10Lines team received 25,000 euros and is starting to develop a robot that can mark and paint pavements at the same time. Til this day, it has been a process that requires significant human and time resources that a robot can easily substitute and perform.

– With a 10,000 euro funding, the Abbuco team will set out to develop a solar park analytics solution that collects and analyzes information from parks set up by different manufacturers to maximize its benefits.

– LifePatch is a new generation marine alarm button based on NB-IoT (narrow band internet of things) that sends an SOS call to the cloud system. This helps to find the person in distress at sea much faster and better, because the positioning of the alarm signal with the help of the cloud system is much more accurate than before. The team received funding of 10,000 euros.

– A Funding of € 20,000 euros was provided to the Magnalysis team, which is developing a solution to make magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) cheaper and more user-friendly. The solution helps to bring the information of MRI examinations into cloud technology, so that it would be available to doctors everywhere, and artificial intelligence would be able to analyze the results of the examinations and assist in preliminary diagnosis. All in all, the solution would make the work of doctors much easier.

– The Milo Appliances team received 5,000 euros to develop a so-called smart kitchen surface with a magnetic motor. Instead of having several separate appliances in each kitchen, such as a blender, food processor, mixer, etc., there is one smart countertop and compatible containers.

The most successful of the campaigns carried out on the co-financing platform Fundwise was AG Vibez, who is developing sound choreography clothing that helps, for example, the deaf to perceive music through the vibrations of sound. The team raised 905 euros with the campaign, a total of 29 teams raised 7,423 euros.

Prototron was founded in 2012 by Swedbank, TalTech and Tallinn Science Park Tehnopol, in 2020 the University of Tartu became another major partner and the fund expanded to Latvia. By now, Prototron has financed 79 smart ideas with a total of nearly 965,000 euros, and the teams have raised more than 28 million euros in follow-on investments.

In addition to the founders, the city of Tallinn, BuildIt Latvia, Samsung, Hedman Lift, Fundwise, Veebimajutus.ee, LMT, Amazon Web Services and BASIS ID offer mentoring and support services to the teams.

This years second round will start in November. Applications can be submitted until November 15th at www.prototron.ee.