FINALS & AWARDS CEREMONY 2017: "They are all winners!" - MIT Enterprise Forum

FINALS & AWARDS CEREMONY 2017: “They are all winners!”

Jul 7 • NEWS/BLOG • 6951 Views • No Comments on FINALS & AWARDS CEREMONY 2017: “They are all winners!”

On Thursday, July 6th, Finals & Awards Ceremony was held at NCSR “Demokritos”, in the framework of the 5th Hellenic Forum for Science, Technology & Innovation, and the MITEF Greece Startup Competition 2017 concluded with the selection of the 3 winners: 1st Prize – Fresh Strips, 2nd Prize – Exclusivi and 3rd Prize – CubeRM.

That was the 3^rd edition of the MITEF Greece Startup Competition, an acceleration program that aims to identify promising Greek technology startups and accelerates them to the global market. During an intensive period of workshops and mentoring, all participants had a unique opportunity to improve their business skills, gain hands-on knowledge and valuable input, build their team, network in Greece and abroad and develop partnerships that will help them further up their startup goals.

hotelsonspot is one of the 24 semifinalists of MITEF Greece Startup Competition 2017

The competition’s winner, Fresh Strips B.V., is a plastic sticker which gets attached to food or medical supplies packages and indicates if the product is safe by changing color. Their team represents a synergy between EY, TU/e, NTUA, Merck and HighTechXL. In just 3 months they have won the Displaying Futures Award and funding by Merck and the Get in the Ring Netherlands competition (300 applicants). Fresh Strips vision is that every package, food or vaccine will have their strip which will become the world’s most accurate sensor.

The 1st runner up is Exclusivi, that offers hotels intelligence for driving guest spending and interfaces that are easy, engaging & fun. Exclusivi consolidates content & APIs from Hotels, Destination Management Companies & local vendors, providing a seamless guest experience. Their integrations, CRM & Analytics offer unparalleled insights, while their mobile & TV apps, smart WiFi portal and marketing automation enable hoteliers to act on these insights, at scale.

The 2nd runner up is CubeRM, a Pricing Management & Optimization SaaS platform, based on sophisticated predictive analytics methods, targeting large global corporations, with special focus on the Life Sciences, FMCG and Hi-Tech industries. CubeRM can assist target customers to create a pricing governance system, ensuring control and process compliance and help them save more than $100M and thousands of productive hours each year.

The winners will be awarded a combination of cash, in-kind contribution and services provided by EY, KornFerry | HayGroup, Dracopoulos & Vassalakis LP, Foley & Lardner LLP and Sylipsis.

Moreover, INTRASOFT International, the global ICT company, will tailor a program focusing on technological know-how and networking for Exclusivi, selected according to its final rank in the competition. Specifically, the program will include: hosting of the entrepreneurial team in INTRASOFT premises, business and technology focused guidance and consulting compatible with the team’s activities, offered by INTRASOFT staff, as well as business communication services and specialist consultancy services (on administration, legal and financial issues and human resources management). In addition, it will include grants for the participation in a European conference and networking initiatives with clients in the geographic areas where INTRASOFT operates.

Vassilis Papakonstantinou, Chairman of MITEF Greece, highlighted that irrespective of the competition’s outcome “we believe that all participating entrepreneurs are winners. They decided to venture in this not so friendly environment. They fought against inertia, pessimism and bureaucracy. I’m confident that they will eventually win. I hope that MITEF Greece contributed to their effort through capacity building and global networking. MITEF Greece support won’t end with the finals tonight, but will continue in the future in many different, direct or indirect ways. And I’m sure that the companies will pay it forward, strengthening the entire community and helping turn Greece into a tech hub by 2021.”

Furthermore, our invited speakers Conno Christou, Co-founder, Avocarrot, Christos Kontellis, General Manager, BU Enterprise Solutions, INTRASOFT International and Alex Maniatopoulos, CEO, Yodiwo, and winner of last year’s competition, shared their experience and his experience in participating at last year’s MITEF Greece Startup Competition and discussed the opportunities that innovative technology creates.

We want to specially thank the 70 judges, 65 mentors and 16 coaches that through their support made this competition possible. We continue our efforts with all of you on our side as a community growing stronger every day.

We would like to express our gratitude to all the organizations and individuals that supported MITEF Greece Startup Competition 2017! Their generous contribution helped make our vision a reality by helping young Greek entrepreneurs further up their startup goals:

Stavros Niarchos Foundation, our founding sponsor. Without their wholehearted support MITEF Greece wouldn’t have been able to offer its services to the community.

The Hellenic Initiative, our annual sponsor.

INTRASOFT International, the MITEF Greece Startup Competition’s Gold Sponsor.

Bodossaki Foundation, our competition supporter.

Our strategic partners: EY, Microsoft Hellas, Foley & Lardner LLP, POTAMITISVEKRIS, Korn Ferry Hay Group, V+O Communication, Sylipsis, Marketing For Tech, Dracopoulos & Vassalakis, who led the workshops, provided services to MITEF Greece and the participating startups and will offer in-kind awards to the winners.