Award fever for KTH startups
Two of four prizes in the Venture Cup regional final were clinched by teams from KTH who are now destined for the finale in September. Map Project was named Impact Maker and CodaEasy awarded Student Superstart.
KTH startups have had an intensive but successful spring. Teams have won prizes in competitions like Venture Cup and Guldräven, been given grants and reached the final of prestigious competitions.
The Venture Cup East final was held on May 24th at Konserthuset in Stockholm. Map Project won the Impact Maker prize for their solution providing exact, complete and user friendly digital postal addresses to the around 4 billion people who lack a usable address, and CodaEasy was awarded Student Superstart for their web based programming platform designed for the new demands on schools when programming becomes a core subject this autumn.
Simple but not simplified
Under the motto “simple but not simplified”, CodaEasy has developed Easy, a programming language that enables learning and understanding of programming at the same time as being easy to teach. Carl-Johan Eriksson from the CodaEasy team says:
- It has been a lot of fun to be part of Venture Cup, and winning of course!
CodaEasy plans to use the prize money to travel around Sweden and reach out to as many schools as possible.
- Getting our message out there is a great challenge, but we are getting very good support from our business development coach Tom Magnergård, Carl-Johan Eriksson continues. Being able to travel is a great opportunity to reach our target audience.
A four billion people problem
Map Project was named Impact Maker of the year. Today at least 4 billion people lack a full postal address. Addresses from Map Project will provide them with
a fully functioning digital address making it possible for them to get a bank account and in other ways exercise their human rights. The founder Karoline Beronius experienced the problem during 2008 when a delegation from Uganda visited Sweden.
– I felt at the time that there must be something that can be done about this situation but it is not until now that technology development has caught up and the solution is possible and comparatively cheap, says Karoline.
About the award of Impact Maker of the year Karoline Beronius says:
- For us it couldn’t be better! Now we are focusing on growing the team and expanding in Africa, North America and Asia.
Tech the common denominator
Apart from all being tied to technology, it is evident that all of the teams have a sustainability mind-set at the core. Everything from providing people without a postal address with a digital version, to a sustainable car wash was among the winning solutions at the reginal final.
– As we all know, the world is facing great challenges in financial, social and environmental sustainability and entrepreneurs being solution focused we are not surprised to see that the competing teams are finding business ideas here, says Julia Selander, CEO at Venture Cup Sverige.
Read more on the Venture Cup website
Award frenzy
In other news, it’s a good time to be a startup from KTH. These are some of the awards that they have won this spring!