Category: Blog

The recipients of funding from Prototron’s 28th round were revealed today. A total of 50,000 euros worth of equity free funding was divided between three winners.

Team Low imPACKt received 5,000 euros, Funky Food 20,000 euros and Ari Care 25 000 euro 25,000 euros of equity free funding from the Prototron fund.

“Prototron green batch teams showed vividly how world changing ideas can be ingeniously simple,” said Liisi Himma, the head of corporate banking of Swedbank and a member of the expert board of Prototron. “This round focused only on green initiatives, however I believe that, in the future, being green will be intertwined in all of the ideas. Even while producing a product or offering a service that seems to be furthest from being green, it has to be environmentally sustainable. Liisi’s favourite team was Funky Food, which will hopefully charm even the most adamant meat lover. 

Funky Food has found a way to offer an alternative to meat by using fungal biomass, not forgetting good taste and nice texture. “Each business should have a sentence they could use to sum up their idea. –  We produce tasty and environmentally friendly alternative to meat.” said the spokesperson to Funky Food Kaspar Kaljas.  

Team Low imPACK found a unique solution to packaging using recycled textile leftovers. “It was our first validation. We had an opportunity to speak to real investors, “ concludes Liis Tiisvelt the CEO of Low imPACK. 

Air Care  – cleaning products created by using innovative technology – received the largest monetary recognition from the expert board. “This experience was intense, the contacts we have made are such a treasure – this was a golden opportunity. Those contacts received from Prototron are already developing into an enjoyable collaboration,” said the front runner of Air Care Marilyn Kesküla

Prototron is a fund founded by Swedbank, TalTech and the Tehnopol Science and Business Park to finance prototypes of technological ideas so that world-changing ideas and products reach the market faster. By today, Prototron has financed 88 smart ideas with a total of more than 1.16 million euros and the teams have engaged more than 58 million euros as secondary investments.

Startup Sporttem, created by Kristjan Orrin, a student at Jaan Poska Gymnasium, won the Prototron Junior at the Lattitude59 start-up conference.

Prototron Junior is a technology-based entrepreneurship program for young people ages 13-19. In the finals of the Lattitude59 start-up conference, a 19-year-old start-up Sporttem by Kristjan Orrin was chosen by the jury of experienced investors as the best idea and the recipient of 1,500 euros of non-participation funding. Sporttem is a mobile application that helps people find both training and hiking companions and opportunities, directing them to a more active lifestyle.

“We are really grateful for that recognition. We worked hard and I dare say on behalf of our team that we deserve it. Thank you!” Kristjan Orrin, the leader of the Sporttem team, accepted the winning check for 1,500 euros. When Kristjan was initially speechless when accepting the award, Prototron CEO Jana Budkovskaya suggested: “If you can’t say anything, ask for more funding, the hall is full of investors and they liked your idea.”

Prototron is a fund founded by Swedbank, TalTech and the Tehnopol Science and Business Park to finance prototypes of technological ideas so that world-changing ideas and products reach the market faster. By today, Prototron has financed 88 smart ideas with a total of more than 1.16 million euros and the teams have engaged more than 58 million euros as secondary investments.

At Latitude 59, a startup convention, Prototron Green batch’s 10 finalists pitch their business idea on Thursday 19th of May at 13:00 at Tallinn Creative Hub.

Prototron Green batch business ideas presentations start at 13:00, by the youngsters, who took part in the Prototron Junior programme, the competition prize is 1500 euros. At 13:20 the 10 finalists of Prototron Green batch takes the stage to compete for the grand prize of 35 000 euros.

The finalists are:

• Ari Care – Cleaning products with innovative technology
• LainePoiss – Helps offshore wind farms and wave energy farms to collect sea wave data
• Low imPACK – Unique packaging solutions made of recycled textile waste
• Mushi – Nutritious protein source with a meat-like texture made from naturally available fungus
• Peek-a-Food – Pick-up point in grocery stores which will gather food products nearing their best before dates or having a non-commercial look
• Salubata – Customisable shoes from recycled plastics
• Smagry – Smart precise fertilization planning platform
• Strawall – Sustainable construction product, that allows contractors to build small or large scale projects with negative CO2 footprint
• Suppy – Autonomous solar powered rental station for Stand Up Paddle Boards
• Terravionics – A UX-driven Agritech modular solution designed to reduce some concerns of small-medium farmers: productivity, profitability, complexity

Prototron is a fund founded by Swedbank, TalTech and the Tehnopol Science and Business Park to finance prototypes of technological ideas so that world-changing ideas and products reach the market faster. By today, Prototron has financed 92 smart ideas with a total of more than 1.7 million euros and the teams have engaged more than 59 million euros as secondary investments.

The green round will be co-financed by the Estonian state from the Environmental Investment Centre programme.

More info:
Prototroni homepage: https://prototron.ee/
Latitude59: https://latitude59.ee/
Prototron Finals @Latitude59: MEET STARTUP: https://fb.me/e/3pZUOjk1V

What´s up with Prototron Junior? You can´t imagine how awesome ideas have joined this year and waiting for the exciting final event Latitude59 at May 19.

Please Welcome our Juniors:

SPORTTEM
A mobile application that helps people find both training and hiking companions and opportunities, leading them to a more active lifestyle together.
From: Tartu Jaan Poska Gymnasium

DRYCYCLE
A bicycle saddle bag made of recycled materials to encourage people to ride more on a daily basis.
From: Tallinn 21st School

WALT BAG
Recyclable bag recycling system.
From: Audentes Sports Gymnasium

YOLLET
An application that allows you to send a receipt directly from the cash register to a smart device to discard paper receipts.
From: Tartu Jaan Poska Gymnasium

CIRCULAR HOUSE
Self-catering house built from recycled materials.
From: Pärnu Koidula Gymnasium

From today until May 20 will take place Prototron’s green audience’s favorite competition. You can find all environmental friendly startup ideas from website prototron.ee and vote for your favorite.

“Bold ideas will change the future – they make it greener, more sustainable and friendlier. Although mentors and startup experts choose the best of Prototron’s green ideas, we also want to hear from the audience – what do you think is the idea that will really make the world greener? ” calls on the head of the competition jury, Jana Budkovskaya, to vote for her favorite.

Prototron green program has currently 37 business ideas from a sustainable mindset. In addition to the website, you can also vote for your favorite on social media – https://www.facebook.com/prototron.ee. The votes will be collected and summed up.  Audience’s favorite voting is opened May 20, 4 PM. Best ideas will be announced at the Latitude59 conference.

From 15 February, school students can apply to the entrepreneurship programme of smart ideas fund Prototron. With the help of modern technology and entrepreneurship in Prototron Junior, young people can realise their cool ideas that solve everyday problems. The award money for the best idea is 1,500 euros and 5 teams that make it to the final round will get 300 euros worth of credit for executing their idea.

“Entrepreneurship and innovation are a part of the life of very many young people. This generation increasingly thinks about how to make the world better with small everyday solutions. This year, we have set our focus primarily on ideas aimed at environmental protection – a clean living environment, waste, circular economy, smart product design – the area in which young people can look for and test solutions with their technological ideas is wide,” Prototron’s CEO Jana Budkovskaya explained.

Last year’s competition was won by three young men from Tartu Jaan Poska Upper Secondary School, who came up with the idea of a doorhandle that disinfects itself in order to help prevent the spread of viruses and bacteria in public and private rooms. By today, they have won the Prototron Junior programme and an innovation award from the 2021 Junior Achievement student company competition and they have founded UV Link OÜ, filed a patent application, concluded a cooperation agreement with the prestigious lock producer AS Valnes and are planning to apply for development support from Enterprise Estonia.

Prototron Junior is expecting young people 13 to 19 years of age to take part in the entrepreneurship programme where they can test and realise their ideas with the help of mentors. In order to participate, young people have to submit an application here and present their idea of how an everyday bottleneck or problem could be solved with technology. Twenty ideas will go on to the programme where participants will spend a month further developing their idea with the support of mentors to a stage where it could be actually executed. The best five teams will make it to the final round and will be given 300 euros worth of credit for making their prototype.

Prototron is a fund founded by Swedbank, TalTech, the Tehnopol Science and Business Park and the University of Tartu to help create prototypes of technological ideas so that world-changing ideas and products reach the market faster. By today, Prototron has financed 89 smart ideas with a total of more than 1.1 million euros and the teams have engaged nearly 50 million euros as secondary investments.

Besides the founders, teams are offered both mentoring and financial support by the City of Tallinn, BuildIt Latvia, Samsung, Hedman Lift, Fundwise, Veebimajutus.ee, Amazon Web Services and BASIS ID. The Prototron Junior initiative has already been joined by Startup Estonia, Harju Elekter, Transferwise, Comodule, HITSA and Insplay.

Prototron will launch a new application round only for green ideas, in order to bring smart green technological solutions to the market as quickly as possible and thereby contribute to saving our world. Applications for participating in the green round can be submitted until 25 March.

“Prototron has always had many green ideas – making energy and industry cleaner, biotechnology, and the reprocessing of materials – specialised topics linked by a mission to contribute to sustainable development. In the hands of flexible start-ups, technology allows them to quickly find and test solutions to critical problems – be it the optimisation of electricity costs and use, dependence on fossil fuels, overproduction of foodstuffs, and so on. Inspired by that, we are opening Prototron’s spring round only for green ideas in order to accelerate the arrival of the best ideas to the market,” Prototron’s CEO Jana Budkovskaya explained the reasoning behind the green round. She pointed out green technologies that have previously received development support from Prototron, such as Themo, Sympower, Fusebox, Gelatex, Bikeep, CoModule, etc.

With co-financing from the Environmental Investment Centre and the support of area experts, Prototron will help turn smart solutions quickly from ideas into products and bring the products to the market. At Prototron, teams are instructed by mentors who know the market and have an extensive network of contacts. Of all the candidates, up to 50 ideas will be selected for the development programme, in order to ensure sufficiently intensive and personal development activities for all the remarkable ideas.

The development programme is open to teams whose technological idea is related to a solution in the area of energy, agriculture and forestry, or transport.

“Green technologies help reduce the adverse impact of human activities on the environment and this means that we are using renewable energy sources and materials to the maximum possible extent. The most important thing here is the entire life cycle of a product and its impact on the environment – the longer it lasts and the more sustainably it works, the better. It is namely these solutions that we wish to find in the green round, to develop them with a more precise focus and send to the market to make our living environment better tomorrow,” Prototron’s Green Round Coordinator and circular economy enthusiast Mayri Tiido explained.

Prototron is a fund founded by Swedbank, TalTech and the Tehnopol Science and Business Park to finance prototypes of technological ideas so that world-changing ideas and products reach the market faster. By today, Prototron has financed 92 smart ideas with a total of more than 1.7 million euros and the teams have engaged more than 59 million euros as secondary investments.

The green round will be co-financed by the Estonian Republic from the Environmental Investment Centre programme.

The recipients of funding from Prototron’s 27th round were revealed. A total of 60,000 euros worth of equity free funding was divided between four winners and one of the teams also received funding in the amount of 75,000 euros from the Estonian Business Angels Network EstBAN.

Teams Filaret and WasteLocker each received 20,000 euros from the Prototron fund, while MenkenTrials and ESBEN received 10,000 euros of equity free funding.

The keywords characterising the ideas of the winning teams are artificial intellect, environmental sustainability, simplicity and efficiency. Filaret gathers and re-processes toxic cigarette butts into an environmentally friendly compostable 3D printing material or filament, thereby reducing waste in an innovative way.

“Mentors were so much help. We completed all the tasks as well as we could. It seems that this brought a result,” said Andreas Ellervee from Menken Trials, the team that won 10,000 euros of funding from Prototron and 75,000 euros of funding from EstBAN. Menken Trials is creating online access to clinical trial documentation, which will significantly reduce the amount of paper used, while also saving costs for pharmaceutical companies and hospitals and cutting the bureaucracy of trials.

ESBEN is making maritime navigation easier by using the AR technology that plots the course of the vessel and takes into account other ships and obstacles at sea.

WasteLocker is using artificial intelligence to develop a waste quality control solution that identifies contamination in public waste containers in order to reduce the sorting and logistics costs of waste handlers.

“Even before we announce the next Prototron round, which has a green focus, we are happy to announce the results of the previous round that demonstrate the capability of technology to support sustainability goals,” CEO of Prototron, Jana Budkovskaja, described her impressions of the teams that made it to the finals. She added that another important fact is that the Estonian Business Angels Network that has recently started working with Prototron found a team suitable for its syndicate from amongst teams at such an early stage.

MenkenTrials’ initiative, which makes the documentation of the clinical trials of pharmaceutical products easier, was chosen by an EstBAN syndicate that augments the prize money awarded by Prototron’s Expert Committee.

“As the Vice President of EstBAN and as a lead investor in Prototron’s syndicate, I am glad that cooperation with Prototron, which began in autumn, has now reached its first successful outcome and we have chosen a properly worthy winner. Prototron’s deal flow again included several very interesting startups and I believe that we shall hear about quite a few of them also in the future,” Lauri Antalainen, the lead investor of the syndicate and the Vice President of EstBAN, added, emphasising the necessity of cooperation in the Estonian startup ecosystem. The Prototron Syndicate is the second syndicate in a short time, which EstBAN is implementing in cooperation with Funderbeam.

Teams Colizy and ZenFlowers held the most successful fundraising campaign on the crowdfunding platform Fundwise.

Prototron is a fund founded by Swedbank, TalTech and the Tehnopol Science and Business Park to finance prototypes of technological ideas so that world-changing ideas and products reach the market faster. By today, Prototron has financed 88 smart ideas with a total of more than 1.16 million euros and the teams have engaged more than 58 million euros as secondary investments.

As the only Estonian startup, MultiCharge received 3 million euro funding from the EIC Accelerator program for the development of an innovative electric vehicle charging solution.

The device being developed by MultiCharge allows switching consumption between phases and using the existing network connection up to 3 times more efficiently. The European Commission’s Innovation Council is funding 65 companies under the program for a total of 360 million euros.

Juhan Härm, the founder of MultiCharge OÜ, said that the newly received financing decision allows for further development of the idea. “At the beginning of the summer, we received 30,000 euros from Prototron, and this was a confirmation that there is a need for such a solution. Recent developments in the price of electricity suggest that different ways must be found to spread the electricity load and make better use of the existing network, “said Härm.

MultiCharge develops charging solutions for electric vehicles, which allow charging up to 3 times more vehicles with the existing network connection and switching loads between phases without interruption.

Soon ready to enter the market

“The loads in the electricity network are unevenly distributed between the phases, with the device we have developed, it is possible to share the loads equally and use the existing electricity networks up to three times more efficiently,” he explained.

The company plans to enter the market in the middle of next year. “Much depends on how quickly we can hire new developers in our team. If everything goes according to plan, we can start with the first pilot in the middle of next year, “said Härm. “Currently, we have an action plan in place for the next two years and clear goals. We do not plan to sell our solution, we want to grow the company ourselves and develop our idea. We just did a market analysis of what our competitors are and we have a unique advantage – we can grow very fast, “Härm noted.

The European Union’s EIC Accelerator innovation fund supports small and medium-sized enterprises, especially start-ups, to develop world-changing innovations.

The autumn round of Prototron is open, submit an application by November 15, 2021 at www.prototron.ee and start your own success story.

We all want to be better in our relationships, don´t we? Now, imagine that you are talking with someone on the phone or online and you get instant suggestions, how to make your conversations smoother, more interesting, and meaningful? Ender Turing is making this reality.

Ready for another million

You may have a fantastic idea, You may have the best team to make it happen, You may get to the very TOP in Prototron program and still not get the money, because you are already too far on bringing your idea alive. Ender Turing is a great example of that scenario. They already had proof of concept and first paying customers, so instead of start building their idea, they started raising money. First crowdfunding was in May and now they are ready to rise 1M euros.

Olena Iosifova, Chief business development officer of Ender Turing, explained, that they are creating an AI – conversation software, that helps salespersons and customer care to be more efficient in their conversations. „Our solution allows all people to be a better talker and better listener. I have been on sales, so I do know, how it goes – you are so excited about your product, so you talk and talk. We don´t want to ask questions or to listen. It is very inherent for human beings and our AI will help to be in all kinds of conversations – sales, personal relationships etc. If you are talking too long, it suggests that maybe you would like to ask a question or listen to your partner for a while. It is like someone is listening to your conversations and gives you tips and hints, how to do better,“ she said.

A unique trump

Currently, the solutions make suggestions for improving afterward, but soon it should be able to make these in real-time, during the conversations. Olena said there are a couple of similar technologies on the market, but these are based on English, so Ender Turings trump is different European languages:„We are already in Estonia, Ukraine and Belarus, next we´ll enter to Poland and Germany.“

Where does she see the team in 5 years? „Hopefully we have spread our technology to the people, who want to be better in their conversations and relationships. It´s not about the money, we truly believe this technology can change lives. Warm relationships make you happy – that is what matters,“ Olena added.

Be honest, be yourself. The more frank you are, the better you get.

„If you have an idea, start working on it. Great ideas don’t come to live themselves, they need people for that. If you struggle in the start, then find like-minded people. People, who share your passion and desire, who is consistant. Of course, it is really hard to make something work from scratch. Apply to Prototron and not only for the money. The connections, feedback, and tight work in a very limited timeframe – these are priceless,“ she encouraged.

One good news after another

They are doing exceptionally well. It was just announced, that Ender Turing joined the MIT Enterprise Forum CEE accelerator, affiliated with the world-renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Jevgen Iosifov – the CEO of Ender Turing was awarded the Cisco DevNet Creator of the year in the EMEAR region. We believe this is only the beginning.

The autumn round of Prototron is open, submit an application by November 15, 2021 at www.prototron.ee and start your own success story.